Bioshock: Divergence
by Kyrian
Summary: We all make choices, but in the end, our choices make us. (Bioshock Infinite AU)
1. Prologue: The World of Sodom

**A/N:** So this profile has been dead for a few years, though I still read fanfiction on a regular basis. When I finished Bioshock Infinite, though, I realized that there was no way I could let the story go with so many possibilities. I make no promises to finish this, nor to update it quickly or regularly, but you, reader, are appreciated all the same.  
EDIT: If you click on this, and it isn't your cup of tea, please review and let me know what I could do better!

**Warnings:** first, please don't read this unless you've completely finished the game, as it will contain massive spoils, even in the first few paragraphs, and you owe it to yourself to finish the masterpiece that is Bioshock Infinite first. Second: though this is essentially an AU, I wanted it to be read like a completely independent novel, so some of it will just seem like a novelization of the game. Feel free to skip those parts, but I'm trying to further flesh out the characters, so I think it's worth I to read the whole thing. And finally, this will contain blood, gore, strong language, racism, religious themes, and everything else the original game contained.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bioshock and this story is completely for my own amusement.

–

_**Prologue: The World of Sodom**_

The worst thing about a cheap room is the windows. Well, maybe not the windows themselves, but the cheap curtains over the windows, the ones that don't keep out a single ray of sunlight after 7 AM. And when your window faces east, even with the mattress in the farthest corner of the room, there's no getting away from that rude awakening after a night of drinking. That's why I decided to put Anna in what was supposed to be the bedroom; hell, at least one of us would be getting some sleep this morning, instead of this god-awful hangover.

Anna.

Annabelle.

I sat up too fast, and immediately bent over the side of the mattress and emptied my stomach straight onto the floor. There wasn't much to get out; I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten. Grimacing at the foul taste, I spit into the mess to clean my mouth a little, then wiped at it with the back of my hand, which was a mistake.

The sharp pain in the back of my hand was nowhere near as bad as the queasiness in my stomach or the pounding in my head, but I still winced as I examined the bloody, ragged mess. Who knows what I had done last night after the first few rounds of beer. If I was lucky, it would get infected and I'd die in this reeking hole of a room before I ever had to see another human face.

Who gives up their own damned kid? It wasn't like I'd had a choice – it was hand Anna over and get paid for it, or die first and let them pull her out of the crib with bloody hands. They'd made it pretty clear that I didn't have a chance in hell of getting out alive if I tried to do something crazy – and nowadays, there wasn't a spot in America that was safe, especially since my pistol disappeared into the pocket of some Joe on my last gambling spree. I'd tried, in the end – tried just enough to get the girl's finger lopped off – but just like always, it was too little, too late. I can't kid myself, nobody took that girl away from me, I lost her because I would rather gamble away all my cash and drink myself under the table to forget I had a baby I didn't know what to do with. So maybe it was for the better, wherever she went. There couldn't be a worse place for a little girl than in a stinking hellhole with drunkard father and no mother.

I still couldn't keep myself from stumbling out of bed and shambling over to the cracked doorway, where the cradle still sat, empty and alone. Pathetic. Guess I could sell it, see if I could make a dime. Hell, those two said my debts were all repaid, but that didn't make my pockets any less empty.

Guess that meant finding a job too. My private investigating business was down the drain; there was no way in hell I was going back to Pinkerton, so that left... some sort of manual labor. There was always enough of that around.

I stood for another minute, just looking at the empty crib, then shut the door and turned away. Wherever they'd taken her, she wasn't coming back. Just another mark on my list of failures. The main room was just as shabby as the other; bottles strewn all over the floor, from when I got too drunk to care where they landed, papers across the scarred, broken table, one dresser up against the wall that held my few sets of clothing. I had a mattress on a cheap frame, no sheets. The only glamourous thing I owned was the lettering on the door that pronounced me a private detective, but business was nonexistent these days. I had a better reputation as a drunk than an investigator, so it wasn't any surprise.

Stumbling to the sink, I splashed some water on my face and rubbed at my eyes to try to get some of the grime and weariness out. The water burned against the back of my hand as I cleaned off the dried blood covering the cuts; they were clearly manmade. AD, for Annabelle Dewitt. Looks like I had wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting her anytime soon; they were deep enough that they were likely going to scar. There was still some dregs of gin left in a bottle sitting on the table; I poured it over the back of my hand, hissing at the sting of the alcohol, then wrapped a strip of fabric around it to keep it from getting dirty.

My razor was going dull, but I'd shaved yesterday, so I still looked pretty respectable. The trousers, shirt and vest I'd worn yesterday were wet and stank like beer; I left them on the floor where they lay and and pulled another set from my drawers, almost falling into the wall as I tried to shove my legs into my pants. A quick comb with my fingers, and the man looking back at me in the mirror looked as deserving of a job as any other joe on the street.

Where should I start looking? There was the docks, where men were always needed to haul in the catches, and bars, they went through bouncers like candy. I could try Leroy for construction, or factory work. If worst came to worse, I'd go hang around by the unemployment office and see if anything came up.

A quick look back reminded me of the mess on the floor; I sighed, then picked up an old rag of an undershirt to mop it up. It stank like cheap beer and stomach fluid; I was lucky I didn't have anything else in my stomach to throw up. Next time, I had to remember to keep a bin over here.

–

Late afternoon found me out in the streets, still jobless and getting more hopeless by the minute. My reputation in these parts was down the drains, I knew, but when even Leroy Wiggins that ran the construction work out Eastside was turning me down, I knew there wasn't much hope. The docks weren't hiring, and not a single Joe at any factory even let me in the door. The unemployment office had been a waste of time; then again, time was something I had in spades, maybe the only thing. The only money I had was a nickel I'd found in my pocket earlier; that was enough to pay for my lunch, but there was nothing left for dinnertime, and if I wasn't careful, I was on the long road to starvation.

With a sigh, I leaned up on the wall and scrubbed my hands through my hair, wishing desperately that I had a smoke. The streets were still damp from the rain last night, and in the back alleyways, trash rotted in giant puddles where people were too busy or too lazy to upright the cans stray animals had knocked over. People hurried by, looking busy and harried, as if every single one was late to wherever they wanted to go. The dames were all pulling their jackets ticket around their bodies against the chill. It was a pretty typical scene in New York; in fact, with it being October, we were lucky it wasn't already snowing, not that that meant I wasn't shivering in my boots, since my only jacket was sitting on the floor in my apartment with the rest of my clothes from last night.

I was starting to think that it was time to leave New York. With the flood of immigrants, it was hard to find a good job in the city, but I'd heard that other places across the country were desperate for the help, places like Colorado and Utah where people were still hesitant to move. Hell, there was some railroad company in town right now, looking for men to work on the tracks out West. The only problem with leaving - and aloud I'd deny it to my dying day – was that I was scared to. New York was home, had always been home, and even if it was full of vagrants and murderers and hopelessness, it was a place I knew. I'd only left it one time, and, well, it hadn't turned out so well. But I was almost out of options. Unless I wanted to end up in the streets (something I'd avoided until now), it looked like I was going to have to.

I was jolted out of my thoughts when a little Negro girl stumbled into me, stuttering an apology and darting down the alleyway to my right. It wasn't hard to see what she was running from; hot on her heels, a pair of white men in faded overcoats, dirty white shirts and ragged, unkept beards chased after her, cursing. When I spun to look down the alley, they had her back against the wall, a woman's wallet clutched against her chest. It was impossible to tell whether she'd stolen it or if the two deadbeats were doing the stealing, but either way, she looked (justifiably) terrified of what was about to happen.

"Hand it over, nigger." one of the men growled, reaching for the wallet; she ducked her head and he howled in pain, snatching his hand back. She must have bitten him.

Pretty gutsy for a Negro.

The other man backhanded her and she fell to the side, shrieking. He stepped on her wrist and bent to snatch up the wallet, then kicked her in the side, and she curled up into a ball, whimpering. The dress she was wearing tore across the shoulder, and her hair lay dank across her cheeks, but she was smart enough to not try to get up. Her cheeks were already stained with tear tracks.

"Please, sirs, me mum gave me that money to go to market today. I have a little sister to feed." she sobbed, but the man simply tucked the wallet into his overcoat, while the other one lifted his leg to kick her again. He lost the chance when I slammed into him and laid him out across the bricks, spinning to slug the other one with the wallet in the jaw.

"I know times are hard, boys, but this is pretty low. Give me the wallet and scram." I growled, backing the man up into the corner of the alley. He scowled, but didn't reach for the wallet, just threw one arm up to cover his face. I snarled and grabbed him by the shirtfront; his eyes widened, but he didn't resist. I slammed him against the dirty bricks, but even though I could tell from the wheeze he let out that it hurt, he still didn't hand over the girl's wallet.

"I said, give me the goddamned wa-" I cut off when something metallic and hard slammed into the back of my head, and my vision went white as I bounced off the wall and slumped onto the ground, falling right into one of the rain puddles gathering where the stone was worn down in the middle of the alleyway. When my vision cleared, I could see that the man I had slammed into was holding a old pipe, and both were looming over me and leering as I lay in the dank water. A gash on my head from the fall dripped sluggishly.

"Sorry pal, no heroics today." the one with the bar leered, and then the bar came down, and something in my side cracked; as I grunted in pain, the man with the wallet kicked me over with a foot, then suddenly something heavy was on my back and neck and I was drowning in 4 inches of water. Panicking, I inhaled; my ears roared and my vision went white again as I struggled against the weight on top of me.

It was no use; the man on me weighed at least as much as I did. It looked like I wasn't going to have to worry about a job after all. The water filled my mouth and curled down my throat, cold as ice; I splayed one hand against the ground and tried to push myself up, but I was like an ant underneath a shoe. There was no way I was bucking him off, and his grip on my hair kept me from turning to the side to get a breath. I guessed it was a fitting end to my life to die in a dank puddle in a back alleyway.

Unbidden, my mind flashed back to that day in the river, the day I'd refused the baptism. Standing in that circle of men, I'd been more afraid than I'd ever been in life, not just of letting a stranger dunk me underwater, but of the burden I'd receive when I came back up. I'd refused because I knew I didn't deserve a second chance, wouldn't know what to do with one if I even got it. Now, it looked like I was finally getting my baptism, with the end result I'd always imagined; being crushed by the weight that came with it.

I stopped struggling and all was quiet for a moment; then, something reverberated through the water and suddenly my body felt lighter; I was rolled over and the moment air hit my lips I gasped, spitting up what felt like a gallon of liquid. It felt like it took centuries to vomit out all the liquid in my lungs. I rolled to my side and spit up more, feeling as if my insides were bruised and tender.

When I looked up, one man lay on the ground, moaning; the other one was leaning heavily against the wall as the little Negro girl advanced on him, holding the pipe he'd hit me with; he looked like he was thinking about fighting, but the minute I stumbled to my feet, his face went white and he turned tail and ran. When she turned to the second man, I snatched the pole from her hands and pushed her against the wall, out of harm's way. The pipe hit the man's skull with a resounding crack. He slumped to the ground without a word.

Sprawled on the ground and sluggishly bleeding above the ear, it was easy to reach into his coat and pull out the wallet; I threw it at the girl and staggered away towards the entrance to the alleyway thoughtlessly. The open street and bright grey light was a blessed relief; if anyone had noticed the fight, they weren't stopping to look. None of them even glanced at me as I sank down, back against the wall, and cradled my head in my hands; it felt like my head was going to either explode or cave in, I wasn't sure which, and the minute I bent my torso, I hissed in pain. Felt like a cracked rib, or maybe several. I sat there for several moments, trying to filter out the pain, find something else to focus on so that I could move without getting light-headed and nauseated.

A light touch on my shoulder made me look up; the Negro girl stood in front of me, wallet clutched in one hand. She couldn't have been more than ten. Her dress and hair were soaked, now torn in more than one place, and only at this moment did I notice she wasn't even wearing shoes, but she didn't shiver in the cold. In fact, she smiled.

"Thank you, mister. I would've died if'n you wasn't there to help me." she said, clasping her hands behind her back shyly. I snorted.

"You're just lucky I was standing there, kid. Hell, you're lucky I didn't run them off and take the wallet myself." I muttered. I expected her to recoil in fear, but when I glanced up again, she didn't even look nervous. She just shook her head and smiled again.

"Oh, no, sir, it weren't chance. When I saw them was followin' me, I decided to follow you. I knew if you wuz around you'd help me, I could see it in your eyes. And I was right."

My mouth went dry. I didn't recognize the look she was giving me, but it seemed genuine. Was it trust? Faith? I didn't know. I had no idea what this little Negro girl saw when she looked at me that made her think I'd help her. But I knew she was wrong. I'd demonstrated that over and over again in my life. Probably I'd stepped in to take the wallet myself, but when I tried to remember, my head started to pound again.

"You got it all backwards, kid." I sighed. "But look. I'm glad you're alright. Get out of here and go buy some food for your mother and your sister." she smiled again and rocked back and forth on her toes, but didn't leave, just looked at me as if something was on the tip of her tongue.

"It's not just for food. I'm supposed to buy us some tickets on the Taggart Transcontinental for tomorrow morning. Mama's decided we're goin' out West. She said she heard that things wuz better out there for us Negros. That people didn't spit on us or call us worthless. And she said there was food enough to go around, and the ladies are all dressed all fine like peacocks in the streets. I think that sounds mighty fine."

She got more and more excited and she sped through her speech, and by the time she finished she was bouncing from foot to foot as if she couldn't keep still. She gave me one last look, curtsied, and scampered off into the streets. It didn't take her long to disappear in the crowd, but I kept watching for a while anyway.

I sat in that same spot for a long time, looking out at the people who passed by, their heads sunk low and their eyes empty. The other man that I'd hit in the head in the alleyway never came out. Maybe he died back there; maybe he was sitting against the wall, too, thinking about the future he didn't have. As for me; between the hangover, the blow to the head, and almost drowning, I would've been content to sit here until night came, since I didn't have the cash to be sitting on a bar stool.

It was funny that the little negro girl had mentioned Taggart Transcontinental. That was the name of the railroad I'd been thinking about earlier, the one that was looking for workers. I'd never worked on a railroad before, but some of the older men in the Army, and they said it wasn't too bad. Steady job, not bad conditions. I'd heard some of the same stuff she had about Colorado; that it was a wild place, full of adventure and new beginnings. Well, people said the same about New York.

What did I have here anyway? There was nothing keeping me here, nothing but bad memories. My room had a bed, a dresser, and an empty cradle. I could sure as hell find all of those in Colorado, if I wanted to. If I left now, I'd have just enough time to go home, put on my last set of clean clothes, and head to the train station before they closed for the day. I'd heard Taggart Transcontinental would pay your passage if you signed on to work out in Colorado; all I had to do was show up and get the job.

Slowly, I pushed myself off the wall and stood up. I wouldn't say it felt like a new beginning or anything like that, but it felt like a choice, and a man's worth is in his ability to make choices. I guess you could argue that it wasn't much of a choice at all, but I could have chosen to stay in New York City and starve to death, so at least to me, it felt good.

"Well this is unexpected." I overhead a lady comment to the man standing next to her as I walked.

"Indeed. Perhaps it'll make a difference."

"Doubtful."

"You're always doubtful."

The woman said something back, but I was too far away to hear them. Anyway, I had a train station to get to.

**A/N: **I feel like the prologue is slightly shittier than the real story. So since I'm posting the first chapter at the same time, go read that.


	2. Ascension to Heaven

_**A/N: **_And here's Chapter 1._ ****_

Chapter One: Ascension** to Heaven**

**20 Years Later**

"DeWitt? Booker DeWitt?" the sudden pounding on my door made me jump in surprise; I looked up from my table and listened for a minute, but the pounding on the door continued with no hint of stopping. Who could it be? I knew I'd paid all my bills on time; I'd just done it yesterday. Hell, if it was Harry from the office, looking to call me back in, I'd give him what for. I'd worked my fingers to the bone this week, and I'd be damned if I spent another minute on the clock. Nah, it was probably a salesman, though how he knew my name, I had no idea.

I had just gotten back from work and thrown off my coat, and I was ready for a cigarette, not a guest. Still, I got to my feet and yanked the door open, scowling. In front of the doorway stood a man dressed smartly in a pair of red trousers and a khaki overcoat, his tie a sage green. Next to him stood a woman in a matching outfit with her hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. They looked vaguely familiar, but I wasn't sure from where. For all of the pounding on the door they'd done, I'd expected a speech as soon as they saw my pretty face, but they just stood there, looking at me expectantly.

"Whaddya want?" I growled. Neither looked impressed by my sour mood.

"It appears you have an outstanding debt you've yet to pay." the man said curtly. I raised an eyebrow, but he didn't elaborate.

"Look, pal, I pay all my bills on time, and I don't gamble. So I don't know what debts you're talking about."

"Oh, but you do." the woman interjected, her tone just as short. "Gamble."

I stopped for a moment and looked at her a little closer, but still couldn't figure out why she looked familiar.

"I haven't bet a single coin in fifteen years. So no, I don't gamble anymore." I said finally, wondering if I wanted to take the chance of just shutting the door in their face. Something told me that they wouldn't leave; they'd just start pounding on the door again, and it would start the same cycle all over again.

"You gambled, you gamble, you will gamble." the woman said.

"It's all the same." the man added.

"Regardless, that's not the debt we mean. It appears you owe Pinkerton's National Detective Agency twenty years of service, as you haven't put in any time since you left New York. Your badge doesn't expire until the day of your death."

I just looked at her, unable to believe what I was hearing. _Pinkerton's _sent these goons to track me down? I was hundreds of miles and twenty years away from my job at Pinkerton's. I'd made it pretty clear that I was done, too; why would Pinkerton's want me now?

"I don't owe Pinkerton anything." I snarled. "I walked out, and that was the end of it. Now if you don't mind, I'm busy." I moved to slam the door, and damn the consequences, but the couple stepped forward and crowded the doorway. It took all I had to keep from slugging the goon in the jaw.

"I told you he wouldn't cooperate." the woman remarked. The man shrugged.

"He never does."

"Never."

Before I could even think to move, he pulled something from his pocket, and then I was drowning in darkness.

–

"_I told you – would work."_

_Anna._

"_... already know it works. The question is -"_

_Anna. I'm so sorry, Anna. _

"_- some sort of penance. Don't see the point. What's done – be done. I suppose – hairshirt." _

_The girl. _

_Wipe away the debt. Release the girl._

Wipe away the debt. Release the girl.

_"See? He's-" away the debt. Release -_

_" - quite fond – theory of yours."_

_"-manufacturing memories-"_

_Wipe away the debt. _

"_Well, the brain adapts."_

_Where's the girl?_

–

I couldn't see anything in this damn storm. Not that there was much to see; to the left, monstrous white-capped waves, and to the right, also monstrous white-capped waves. This boat wasn't much more than fifteen feet long, and it floated on the water like a leaf in a thunderstorm, tossed about by the waves. I didn't know why these two buffoons felt like we had to leave in the middle of the goddamned Apocalypse, but it would have been nice if they'd at least warned me to bring a rainslicker. I'd been soaked to the bone for so long on this trip I almost couldn't remember what it was like to be dry.

"Are you going to just sit there?" the male Lutece demanded from the front of the rowboat, where he was struggling to row against the current. I thought for a minute he was talking to me, but then his sister piped up, so I kept my mouth shut.

"As compared to what? _Standing?_"

"Not standing. _Rowing._" he demanded, viciously yanking at the oars. The female Lutece didn't budge.

"Rowing? Hadn't planned on it." she commented. She turned around and without a word handed me a wooden box; where she'd taken it from, I had no idea. Had she gotten into the boat with it?

"What's this?" I asked, more to myself than her because I knew she wouldn't answer, and examined the lid. It had a gold plate on the top that read 'Property of Booker DeWitt - 7th Cavalry, Wounded Knee'. Where had she gotten this? I'd never seen it before.

"Coming here was your idea." continued the female Lutece in an accusatory tone as I tucked the box into my lap, trying to shield it from the rain and spray flying into the boat. There wasn't much to be done; it would probably be ruined by the time we reached whereever we were going.

"My idea?"

"I made it very clear I didn't believe in the exercise." she said in a cool tone. I wasn't sure what they were talking about, but that was usually the case with those two; they talked in riddles like damn magicians. Even when they responded to my questions, I didn't understand what they were saying.

"The rowing?"

"No, I imagine the rowing is wonderful exercise."

"Then what?"

"The entire thought experiment."

I felt like my teeth were going to chatter right out of my head; did they expect me to track this girl down with a case of pneumonia? But that was if we even got to where we were going, because it seemed to me that at any moment, this rowboat was going to capsize and drown us all.

"Excuse me," I tried, waving my hand as if I thought it would help, "how much longer?"

They completely ignored me.

To take my mind off the ice in my veins, I unlatched the box and carefully opened it. It was full of random papers and, more usefully, a pistol, which I picked up to check for ammo. I wouldn't have put it past these two to give me a weapon and no bullets, but thankfully it was loaded, so I shoved it into my belt; not very secure, but the best I could do for now. The next piece I picked up what a photograph of a young girl, probably in her late teens, with dark hair and simple, sensible clothes. 'Elizabeth' was scrawled in the corner; the back read 'Bring to New York unharmed' in large letters. There were a few more things in the box, but just then, the female Lutece said something that sounded like it involved me, so I threw the photograph back in the box and closed it, tuning into their conversation.

"-imagine he has a greater interest in getting there than I do." it was as if she hadn't listened to a word I'd said, every time I'd asked how much further it was. She hadn't even looked at me once during the entire trip.

"I suppose he does." male Lutece quipped back, "but there's no point in asking."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't row."

I bristled a little at that. They hadn't even given me a chance to help with the damn rowing. They'd placed me squarely in the back of the boat, on the only seat without oar hooks, and if they couldn't be bothered to answer my damn questions, I couldn't be assed to help with the rowing. Anyway, over the bow of the boat, I started to see a bit of light; while the chance to 'accidentally' push one of them overboard under the guise of helping was tempting, I tuned them out again in favor of trying to see what we were approaching.

The first thing that came into view was a dock; by the time we had almost reached the side of it, a large lighthouse loomed directly in front of us. It was built on a small outcropping of rocks that jutted out of the sea, but beyond the lighthouse, I saw only endless waves. Who built a lighthouse in the middle of the damn ocean? And why?

"We've arrived." female Lutece stated redundantly as we pulled up to the dock; a moldy, brittle ladder clung to the side of it just in front of where I was sitting in the boat. Clearly, they expected me to climb it. It didn't look like it would hold my weight, and I gave the the siblings a look.

"He's not moving," female Lutece said, as if I wasn't there.

"But he will. ...eventually." the brother replied. I sighed and reached one hand out gingerly to grasp the ladder, clutching the box tightly in the other hand. It felt sturdier than I looked, and I made it onto the dock without incident. When I looked back, the rowboat was already pulling away from the dock.

"Shall I tell him when we'll be returning?" female Lutece said, but it sounded more like a mockery than a real question.

"It might give him some comfort." if would have made any difference, I might have told the two where they could put their comfort; but since they had just dropped me off in the middle of the ocean and were in the process of leaving, I thought it better to try to get some information out of them before I was stuck here with no way back.

"Hey! Is somebody meeting me here?" I yelled over the squall of the winds, hoping that they weren't too far away to hear.

"I'd certainly hope so," the brother replied irritatingly.

"It does seem like a dreadful place to be stranded." and she was lucky that they were already almost out of sight, or I would have strangled her. I watched them until they were lost in the storm, half-hoping they would turn around out of the goodness of their hearts to help me. They didn't.

"Well, maybe there's someone inside." I muttered to myself, looking back at the lighthouse. The spotlight on top was on and spinning, so that had to mean someone was here working, I assumed. Tired of being rained on and blown around, I hurried off the dock and past a half-sunken boat, taking the stairs two at a time to the top.

Unsurprisingly, the door was closed. Nailed to it was a piece of paper that read 'DeWitt – this is your last chance. BRING US THE GIRL AND WIPE AWAY THE DEBT.' It wasn't signed; something dark stained the bottom of the paper, but I couldn't tell if it was just water or – something else.

I banged on the door with a fist. "Excuse me. It's Booker DeWitt." Without waiting for an answer, I pushed the door open and barged inside. "I guess you're expecting... me...?"

The room was empty of human presence. It looked like the bottom of the lighthouse was all open space, but I couldn't see the back of the room in the gloom; to the right, a staircase curved up the wall. The air inside was just as cold as the outside, but unlike the ocean, it was quiet and still. Uncomfortably still. Even the roar of the waves seemed far away, though I'd left the door behind me open.

What had stopped me in my tracks was the table right in front of the door, where the only light in the room shone from a small, lit candle. A metal basin took up most of the space on the table, with folded white towels in a pile to the left; above it hung a framed piece of embroidery that read, 'Of thy sins shall I wash thee.'

What the fuck? This was a lighthouse, not a goddamned church. Did they really expect people to 'cleanse themselves' when they came in?

I turned away from the table, unnerved, only to find another piece of embroidery hanging at the foot of the stairs. This one read, 'From Sodom shall I lead thee'. I ignored it and started up the stairs.

"Is anyone here? Hello?" I called as I headed to the second level. The only answer was silence and my footsteps on the metal steps. The second level looked like the living quarters; there was a wash basin, a bed, and a desk, with things scattered around carelessly. I walked up to a map on the wall; it showed the United States, with a circular route tacked on it in red string. Next to it hung a timetable titled 'Condensed Schedule to and from Columbia'. A note tacked on the map read, 'Be prepared. He's on his way. You must stop him. - C' There was no indicator of who 'he' was or why he needed to be stopped, but considering I'd just strolled in, it didn't seem like whoever ran this place was too worried about him.  
I turned to the left to continue up the stairs and stopped again. The table next to the stairway was laying on its side. Broken dishware and food was scattered all over the floor, as if someone had flipped the table violently. I unconsciously reached for the pistol I'd shoved into my waistband; feeling better for the protection, I quietly ascended the next stairway, listening for any sign of life. The next embroidery piece I passed read 'To thine own land shall I take thee.'

I passed a bookcase that had been halfway shoved down the stairs and stopped dead in my tracks, involuntarily sucking in a breath. There was a dead man propped up against the wall.

"Shit."

He had a bloody bag covering his face, but the knife laying on a footstool nearby made it clear how he'd died. His hands were bound behind his back, and the pool of blood on the floor was so thick it looked impossible that it had come from one man. He must have been the lighthouse keeper; whoever had murdered him had left a sign that read 'DON'T DISAPPOINT US'.

It wasn't hard to figure out who the sign was for.

When I saw the still-lit cigarette smoking in the ashtray next to the body, I whirled around and ran up the last flight of stairs and back out into the rain. The motherfucker that had killed him had to still be here somewhere, and I hadn't passed him on the way up, which meant he was up top somewhere.

I was wrong. The top level was just as empty as the rest of the lighthouse; nothing moved but the giant spotlight, whirling around endlessly across an empty sea. I looked around two, three times, but there was nothing up here but an empty barrel. The door to the inside didn't even have a handle; it looked like the whole thing had been removed and replaced by a wrought metal angel, spreading his arms over a set of bells.

There was no way out of this place. They had said something about a city, but the only life I saw was some dim lights on the coast, where we'd set off from. There was nowhere for me to go.

I turned back with a sigh, and something on the bells caught my eye, so I stooped to examine them a little closer. There were three of them, each with a symbol etched into the surface that looked vaguely familiar.

"What a minute... that card..." I opened the box the Luteces had given me and pull out one of the cards that had been stuck to the inside of the lid. It had the same three symbols: a scroll, key, and sword, drawn on it with numbers next to each.

This was ridiculous. How was ringing some bells supposed to help me? But I didn't have a better option, so I put the card away and reached for the bells. The scroll, once; the key, twice; and finally the sword, twice. Nothing happened.

Until a foghorn sounded, and the entire sky lit up, bloodred.

I swore.

It took me a minute, but I realized that the foghorn sounded the same melody I'd just played on the bells. It played twice, then the spotlight behind the grate began to spin. It raised up into the ceiling and disappeared; when I looked back, the grate with the bells hand had swung open. Inside the room stood a chair, bolted to the floor. It was sleek metal and red upholstery, and looked completely out of place.

I stood for a moment, but nothing else happened. This whole ordeal was giving me the shivers, and if I wasn't stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean with only a dead man for company, every boat sunk and no way of reaching the shore, I would have left right then, and damned the consequences. But something told me that I was already in too deep, and I would bet money that nobody was coming to save me.

So I took a breath and sat in the chair.

Before I'd even had a chance to think, metal restraints strapped around my wrists, and I yanked against them to no effect. A mechanical voice said something to me, but I was too busy struggling, and all I heard was 'Pilgrim'. Metal plates shot up from below and closed around me, then the chair pitched forward and dipped, so I was looking below into some sort of machinery. My pistol slipped out of my belt and clattered on the metal below.

"NonoNOGODAMNIT-" but I could see flames below and then the chair swung back up to face forward and my only means of defense was just a memory.

"Ascension. Ascension on the count of five. Four. Three. Two. One."

I swore, and whimpered, and screamed, but there was nothing I could do.

"Ascension. Ascension." And I ascended.

The mechanical voice listed off the altitude as I rocketed up, but I was quickly approaching a panic attack as I jerked against the restraints. It took only seconds before all I could see out the window was storm clouds, milling around the pod; then, suddenly, they disappeared into bright light.

When the white dots disappeared from my vision, I looked out the window in astonishment at a city. A city in the clouds.

"Hallelujah." the mechanical voice whispered.

_**A/N: **_So? The chapters are a bit short now, but they should get longer as I go on. By the way, I forgot to mention that this is completely unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. I'm playing through the game as I write this to keep all the information as accurate as possible, but if you see anything that's misquoted or incorrect, give me a shout.

Reviews and criticism always appreciated!


	3. Baptism of a Sinner

**A/N: **So this is the first chapter where anything really changes.

_**Chapter Two: Baptism of a Sinner**_

The pod slowed and began to drift forward instead of rocketing up, and I blinked at the sight in front of me. Buildings in small clusters simply floated, the air beneath them empty. A few dirigibles swam lazily by; directly in front of me, a giant statue of an angel beckoned, though with the sun at her back, her features were encased in shadow.

We drifted down, past a dirigible, past a bell tower, and then a sign with the profile of a white-haired, bearded man labeled 'Father Comstock – Our Prophet'. Prophet of what, it didn't say.

Just as I started to believe I was floating away through a dream, the pod landed with a thud, then lowered into some sort of building, cutting off the view. We descended past levels of moving machinery, interspersed with text engraved right into the metal. I read it numbly, but it didn't hold any answers.

_'Why would he send his saviour unto us,  
If we will not raise a finger for our own salvation?  
And though we deserved not his mercy,  
He has led us to this new Eden,  
A last chance for redemption. '_

The next level held a huge stained glass window of the same man from the sign, Father Comstock. Above him, '_And the Prophet shall lead the People to the new Eden.' _

This was the last stop. The pod landed, the front hatch opened, and finally, my wrist restraints unlatched, leaving me to stand up slowly and stagger out into a stone room filled ankle-deep with water. In keeping with the religious theme, it resembled some sort of church, filled with candles and pews set into the walls. To the left was an archway with, unsurprisingly, more script.

_'The seed of the Prophet shall sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of man.' _

It sounded just like more of the same, fake prophecies that I'd always heard religious types spouting, and it was beginning to get old. I wanted out of this church.

The next room held a large statue of Father Comstock and more candles. To the right in another room was a stained glass window of Father Comstock and a woman, holding a baby. Toys and money were heaped in a basket in front of it like offerings; with a quick look around to make sure I was still alone, I dug through the basket and picked up the money, feeling not at all ashamed. Clearly if it was still lying here, the Comstock family didn't need it.

The baby must have been 'the seed of the Prophet'. I didn't dwell on it too much, as I had a feeling I'd hear more than I ever wanted to about it before I got out of this damned place, so I turned back to the room with the statue to look for a way out.

For the first time since the Lutece twins abandoned me on the dock, I saw another live person. On the other side of the statue stood a man in a white habit, looking across at me with his hands clasped across his chest.

"Excuse me! Where am I?" I called, crossing to where he was standing in the doorway of another room.

"Heaven, friend. Or as close as we'll see 'til Judgement Day." He didn't continue, just looked at me and ducked his head. With those cryptic words, all the anger and frustration that had been pushed away by my confusion came boiling back to the surface; I was sick and tired of the useless answers I was getting from everyone in this damned place, and if someone didn't give me some concrete information soon, they were gonna be the next one against the wall with a bloody bag over their head. I brushed past him angrily.

The stairway beyond the man in the habit led down to a giant hall filled with candles, water, and pillars. To each side, more men marched slowly towards the other end of the hall as if in prayer, where a man's voice rang out in what sounded like a sermon. I half-listened as I sped down the walkway, anxious to be free of this place.

"And every year on this day of days, we commit ourselves to our city and our Prophet, Father Comstock. We recommit through sacrifice, and by the giving of thanks, and submerging ourselves in the sweet waters of baptism. And lo, if our Prophet had not struck down our enemies at Wounded Knee, and not railed against the Sodom beneath us, it would have been enough." by the end of the first sentence, it had already been enough for me. I grabbed two men by the shoulder and pushed through the crowd of people towards the preacher in the front, who looked up as if he'd known all along I was there.

"Is it someone new? Someone from the Sodom below?" he called out, sweeping his arms out towards the circle as if this was just part of the sermon. "Come to Columbia to be born clean, in front of our Prophet, our Founders and the Lord?"

"I just need passage into the city." I interrupted, trying to keep my voice calm.

"Passage to the city." he laughed, shaking his head as if I was a child. "Brother, the only way into Columbia is through rebirth in the sweet waters of baptism." here, he gestured to the pool he was standing in. "WILL YOU BE CLEANSED, BROTHER?"

"Hey, I'm just looking to pass through." I tried, but he only stood patiently, one arm outstretched. He was in front of what looked like the only damn way out, and though I wanted to storm past him, I knew it was too early to make waves in a new city, if I wanted to find this damn girl and get the hell out of here.

"Reach out, brother!" someone from the circle called as I stood, trying to figure out what to do. A few more people chimed in; when I turned, they were all staring at me with the same look on their faces. It was probably supposed to be encouraging, but something about their gaze was making my skin crawl.

It was either this or get back on that rocket. Might as well get it over with. I moved forward before I had a chance to talk myself out of it and grabbed the preacher's hand.

He turned me towards the circle of people, began his sermon again, and shoved me under the water. I could hear him speaking as he held me under; luckily, he pulled me back up before the panic set in too deeply, and I gasped in relief.

"I don't know about you, brothers and sisters, but this one doesn't look clean to me." he turned to look at me, and for the first time, I really met his eyes. They were empty and cold, the pupils almost indistinguishable from the iris. Without warning, he put his hand on my forehead and shoved me back into the water.

No, no, this wasn't right. You didn't fucking baptize someone twice. I wasn't a man of the Lord, but even I knew that. I waited a minute, fuming, but still he held me under; another minute, and still he preached, his grip on my body like stone.

Fuck this. I'd almost died once by drowning; I wasn't letting some old hack finish the job. But the more I struggled, the tighter his grip became, so tight that it felt like my skull would buckle under the pressure. Still, he held me under, and my vision went dark.

–

_Someone was pounding on my door. As I lifted my head, the room around me, my room, swam in my vision. Something had leeched away all the color._

_"Mr. Dewitt." The pounding continued. "MR. DEWITT."_

_"Go 'way."_

_"-had a deal. Find the girl and wipe away the debt."_

_The pounding continued._

_"I said I'm not gonna do it."_

_The pounding didn't cease. It was echoing around the room, in my head, down into my core._

_Suddenly, I was at the door. I pushed it open, and New York appeared in front of me._

_It was on fire._

_A zeppelin swimming in the sky turned, turned as if staring at me, and then there was a light, and it was coming right for me -_

I gasped, and coughed, and for an eternity, water leaked from my mouth and down my chin. I closed my eyes, coughs wracking my whole body, until finally, I could breathe again. When I sat up, I was again in a pool of water, but this time, under an open sky, which was an improvement. Three statues knelt around me. In front of the middle one, two figures in white habits chanted, ignoring my presence completely.

That idiot priest needed to learn the difference between baptizing a man and drowning one. If I ever saw him again, I was going to show him by example.

When I took a second look at the statues, I realized that I recognized these ones; George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson looked down at me, each holding an item as if offering it up. I understood patriotism, more than religion at least, but these statues were as wrong as everything else in this place I'd seen. I needed to find a landmark and figure out where the hell I was.

Past the praying couple, I finally stood on solid ground, and if I'd been a lesser man I would have fallen to my knees and kissed it. I would never taken grass for granted again.

The place I'd woken up in looked like a garden, with a wide grassy walkway hedged by flowers and fountains. People were scattered here and there, all of them wearing the white habits and deep in prayer. I walked past all of them without stopping, trying to keep my sneer to myself as I caught bits and pieces of their words. At the end of the garden stood a door, with the quote about the 'seed of the prophet' above it. Were these proverbs from the bible? I didn't remember any of them from when I was a kid and my mom dragged me to church. Maybe these people were all practitioners of some hair-brained cult. Clearly, just because the city flew didn't mean it didn't have its fair share of fools.

The door led out to a view of the city, where I could see the different islands floating in midair. In front of me was another statue of Father Comstock, but I couldn't reach it; the walkway ended abruptly in midair, dozens of feet away from the next floating island. How the hell did these people get around?

When I looked carefully over the ledge, I realized there was a bridge floating up to the edges of the two pieces of land. When it was level with where I was standing, a metal platform on each side with thick teeth lowered to lock the islands in place, like a drawbridge.

Benches lined each side of the bridge, and people sat perched on them, talking and laughing as if things like this happened every fucking day. They were all dressed to the nines; between the people and the scenery, it was as if I had just walked into a postcard. Nowhere in America was this clean and beautiful; I'd been alive almost forty years and I'd never seen a place like it. Even I as I walked past a hotdog vendor, he said good morning as if he knew me; when I looked at him in surprise, he just smiled in a friendly way.

The Comstock statue stood in the middle of some type of square, surrounded by shops and buildings. As I crossed it and began down another street, it started to look more like a real city; puddles of water near manholes and papers scattered on the ground. I walked past the shops and vendors, but was again stopped by a gap between the islands. More people were gathered here, looking expectantly off to the right; as I looked, I noticed a drumbeat, and confetti whirling around in the air. It was a parade, I realized, a floating parade built on small airships that featured, unsurprisingly, Father Comstock and his miracle child.

"All clear. Good luck at the raffle, folks." a police man standing guard near the crossing announced when the bridge was finished connecting, and the crowd of people moved down the street slowly, talking excitedly about some 'event' to come. It looked like it was some sort of holiday, or fair day. Now that I thought about it, the preacher that had tried to drown me had said something about a celebration today.

Sure enough, leaned against the wall on the other side was a sign announcing the 'Columbia Fair and Raffle', which sounded like it was just up ahead. The longer I dawdled, looking at my surroundings, the emptier the streets got as everyone hurried to the fair. One shop that I peeked in on my way was completely deserted; a bowl set up in front announced that visitors were on the 'honor system' – I saluted my honor by picking up the coins laying in the bowl and snatching an apple from the display to bite into as I strolled down the street.

It was another fifteen minutes before I stumbled onto anything of interest; through an archway, I sighted the giant stone angel I'd seen on the way in, the base shrouded by white clouds. Stopping to rummage through my box, I pulled out a postcard with a drawing of the same angel on it. Across the top was printed 'Greetings from Monument Island'. That's right, that's where they said I'd find her – the girl, Elizabeth. Now I just had to figure out how to get there.

The boy standing in front of me when I looked down scared the shit outta me.

"Telegram, Mr. DeWitt." he said, thrusting the piece of paper at me proudly as if there was no doubt that was who I was. "Telegram for you, sir."

I took it from him in shock, and he saluted and scampered away before I had a chance to ask him where it had come from.

**Dewitt STOP  
Do not alert Comstock  
to your presence STOP  
Whatever you do, do not  
pick #77 STOP**

**Lutece**

I had seen them row away after they left me on the docks. I _knew _I had. How could they have possibly followed me here? And how had that boy picked me out of the crowd when I hadn't been in this city more than thirty minutes?

As usual, I had more questions than answers. In fact, I was starting to get so many questions that I was forgetting them at an alarming rate.

I didn't expect to have any trouble with the Prophet. I looked just like any other schmuck in this city, if maybe a bit scruffier, so unless he knew every person here by face, there was no way he could pick me out of the crowd. The bit about the number I didn't understand; I supposed I could cross that bridge when I came to it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a telescope aimed at the angel; thinking that I could it to find a route there, I crossed to it and bent to look through the scope.

The base was still completely covered by clouds; when I swiveled the telescope down and to the left though, I saw something else that might help me: Lutece, standing on the corner of the street and juggling while his sister watched. I raised my head, ready to give them a piece of my mind, but when I looked back to the spot where they had been standing, they were gone. Looking back through the telescope didn't make them appear; I clearly was losing my mind. Growling in frustration, I turned and stalked down the street.

The lower way that looked like it ran towards the Angel was locked and guarded by a pair of uniforms, who told me to get lost when I asked to get through. Strangely, it made me feel a little better that they acted like normal cops; every other Tom, Dick, and Harry in this place greeted me like we were old friends, which was a trait that would get you nothing but choice words in New York. It did set me back trying to find Elizabeth though. I turned back to the upper way and passed a sign that read, 'This way – Columbia Fair and Raffle'.

Whatever I had expected from the fair, I was blow out of the water. There were vendors and music and balloons everywhere, and people milled about with excited smiles as if they'd never seen such a thing. Hell, maybe I hadn't either, I didn't know. I passed one stage where a man talked about something called a 'vigor' – the crowd of people surrounding him gasped, and when I looked to see what had surprised them, I saw one of the salesman's helpers, a Joe dressed in a red devil suit _floating in midair. _After a minute, he landed back on his feet with a bow, and held his hands up for the crowd to see; sparks played between his fingertips.

I had never seen such a thing. It wasn't possible. But when I passed another booth, another man cried out, "Young sir, young miss, come cast out the Red Devil, save the woman and child!" He looked at me and beckoned, so I strolled up, looking at the sight set up in the booth. The boot was furnished to look like the inside of a house. There was a cutout of a woman and a baby set into a track on the floor, and another costumed Red Devil lolling about, clearly waiting for a challenger.

"Step right up, sir! Use our Bucking Bronco to cast out the Red Devil and save the woman and child!" he gestured at the bottle that was standing on the counter, so I picked it up. The top of it was shaped like a horse with a man pulling at its reins.

"What do I do?" I asked, confused. Was I supposed to hit it with the bottle?

"Simply hold the bottle in your left hand, and when you spot the Red Devil, hold out your right and let the vigor do the work for you!"

So this was the same stuff the the other guy was promoting. That still didn't give me any idea what it was.

"I don't get it." I muttered, but a curtain designed to look like flames had covered the inside of the booth, so I transferred the bottle to my left hand and tried to imagine 'letting the vigor do the work for me'.

When the curtain lifted, the cutout of the woman was moving back and forth along the track, and the man in the Devil costume was crouching behind a chair in the corner. I held out my hand, feeling stupid, but nothing happened.

"Focus, my friend! Feel the vigor, and _push_!" the boothkeeper suggested.

Right. Push. I waited for the cutout to get out of the way, then tightened my grip on the bottle and flung my hand out, as if I expected the mere gesture to sweep the devil away. Something welled up in my chest, a feeling that swirled about and made me a little lightheaded, and I imagined grasping it and shoving down through my hand.

The crazy thing was, it worked. It materialized as wind, and the Red Devil whipped up into the air and hung there, suspended. The power that had done it cut off and curled up in my torso again, waiting for me to call on it.

"There you go, son! One down, only two to go!" called the boothkeeper, sounding delighted.

The curtain came down, and I 'cast the Devil out' twice more, before the boothkeeper told me I was done and handed me a small purse filled with silver eagles. The moment I set the bottle down, the power flowed out of me, leaving my chest feeling empty.

I left the booth and continued on, looking around me at everything else the fair had to offer. There were so many things here I'd never seen before, things I didn't even know existed. As it turned out, all the horses in Columbia were mechanical; they were on display on a stage down the way, tossing their heads and snorting just like real horses, but made clearly of metal. Another booth held a metal and wood contraption with a record called a 'voxophone' – I asked the boothkeeper what it did, and when it clicked on, it played my question back to my in my own voice. I had never heard my voice come from anything but my own mouth before.

Some of the booths, thankfully, were like any other you'd see at the fair. Jugglers performed in the streets, and a band played on the stage. A few of the games involved shooting a group called the 'Vox Populi' with air rifles and shotguns, something I dominated easily and won quite a bit of money at before the boothkeepers shooed me away.

The next stage I passed held an announcer and a giant of a man, covered in metal and mechanical looking doodads. His hands were the size of frying pans, maybe bigger. But he didn't act his size; he crouched and looked around shamefully, occasionally covering his face as if he was afraid to be seen.

The signs on either side of him seemed to make his state out as a miracle procedure for sickly people. He didn't look too happy about it though.

"Have you ever seen anything like it?" a man said in awe as he looked up at the giant.

The woman next to him shook her head, looking a little nervous. "He looks so sad..."

"Sad? What is there to be sad about?" but looking at the giant, who stood on the stage like some kind of circus animal and glanced at us woefully from under raised hands, I privately had to agree with her. It didn't look like it had been a miracle for him.

The fair dead-ended at a closed gate, manned by a mechanical saleskeeper who whirred to life when I stepped near him. "Sorry pal, the raffle is all sold out." he said, his metal face not looking the least bit sorry. "Entrance is reserved for dignitaries and very important personages alone."

I was guessing that didn't mean me. "Dammit, I don't want to go to the raffle, I just want to get through." I said, looking for a button to push or a knob to twist to get me a ticket.

"Sorry, the raffle is at full capacity right now." the vending machine man droned on, twisting his head back and forth in a semblance of talking. I scowled and banged on the side of the machine, but nothing happened.

"Wanna get into the lottery, handsome?" a breathy female voice called from behind me. When I turned, the woman at the booth smiled at me flirtily, her hands around a wicket basket full of bottles that was hanging in front of her.

"I don't even want to be in the damn raffle, I just want to get through, and all the roads are closed." I explained. She giggled, and offered the basket of green bottles to me.

"Well then, I think I can do something about that. Here you go, these are free for my favourite fair-goers." she cooed, winking. I picked up the bottle and looked at it doubtfully. It looked a little like the bottle I'd used at the Cast Out the Red Devil booth, except it was green and shaped like a swooning woman, with a picture of a heart on the front. What were they called, vigors?

"What am I supposed to do with it? Just hold it?" I asked, looking back at her. She giggled again, and shook her head as if I'd asked a stupid question.

"No, silly, these are permanent. You have to drink it for it to work. But don't worry," she lowered her voice to a murmur, "it won't bite." something about her tone suggested to me that she would, if I let her.

Looking away from her sultry gaze, I uncapped the bottle and raised it to my lips. It was as if someone had bottled smoke; it swirled around my mouth and slithered down my throat with a sweet, almost cloying taste, and the moment it hit my tongue, the world around me got hazy around the edges and I swayed on my feet.

"With just a whisper, they're all ears..." then someone started to whisper, but when I looked back at the flirty boothkeeper, she was drawing a heart in the air with her fingertips, her lips closed. She brought one hand to her mouth and blew me a kiss, her breath puffing like green dust in the air, and then her whole body dissolved into green light. The whispering got louder and louder, but never clearer, until it was all I could hear. I felt like I was going to throw up.

At all once, the green light disappeared and the world came back into focus. By the time my nausea receded, the boothkeeper was already flirting with a new customer.

"What the hell was that." but no one was listening. The boothkeeper was laughing at something the man in front of her had just said.

The same feeling I'd got from the vigor at the booth was now curled up in my chest, but it was stronger this time, and when I glanced at the mechanical man guarding the gate, it stirred a little, like it was yearning in the direction of the machine. I walked over to it, and, feeling for the same push that had kickstarted the vigor last time, I flung my arm out towards the mechanical man's torso. The feeling uncurled and shot down my arm, materializing in the same poisonous green color that I'd seen after I drank the vigor, and sank into the machine.

"Well, if it isn't assemblyman Beauford! Your spot at the raffle awaits!" he continued rambling about how he hadn't recognized me, but I ignored him.

I walked halfway through the gateway and stopped. The Lutece siblings were standing on the other side, looking at me pointedly. The male Lutece had some sort of chalk scoreboard hung on his body, divided into two sides with the words 'Heads' and 'Tails' written as headings, while the female Lutece was holding an empty platter in front of her like an offering.

None of us offered the other a greeting when I stepped in front of them.

"Heads," male Lutece said curtly,

"Or tails?" female Lutece finished.

"Come on, let me through." I said tiredly, unwilling to deal with their shit right now. Nothing they ever did was helpful to me, and this looked like a waste of time too. I had a girl to find, and that didn't involve playing stupid games for their entertainment.

Neither moved. Instead, the male Lutece threw a silver eagle at me, which I caught out of reflex.

"Heads," he said again.

"Or _tails._" the sister again finished, this time with venom laced in her words.

I was so sick of these two. In one fluid motion, I turned around and pitched the coin over the gate as far as it would go, watching in satisfaction as it arced across a building and disappeared behind the rooftop.

For the first time since I'd met them, they looked shocked. Neither said a word, and let me tell you, it was about time.

"I don't leave things up to chance." I said shortly, and walked away. When I looked back, they were gone.

–

**A/N: **I'm curious to know how I'm doing with the novelization of the story. Is it too much detail? Too little? Have I left out things that I shouldn't have, or vice versa? Let me know!


	4. The False Shepherd Arrives

_**A/N: **_So I want to add a little warning about this chapter. It involves heavy racism, both consciously and subconsciously. And of course, pretty graphic violence.

_**Chapter Three: The False Shepherd Arrives**_

The part of the city beyond the gate where I'd seen the Luteces was much emptier than the fair. I assumed everyone was at the raffle, which made it a hell of a lot easier to travel in peace. The further down the street I got, the louder the music was, and I could see fireworks over the city.

I passed a group of children playing cops and robbers and another statue, this one of a woman, and I blinked when I read the nameplate at the base. It was labeled 'R. Lutece – the woman who gave Columbia her wings.' In her hand, a piece of land floated, resembling the floating islands the city was built on.

That made no sense. The Luteces had hired me to smuggle a girl out of the city, and they had warned me against interaction with Comstock, who ran the city. If she had had such a monumental hand in building Columbia, what was she and her brother doing skulking around in the shadows, trying to undermine Comstock's authority? Every minute in this journey, I was getting the feeling that I was involved in something a lot bigger than I understood, and I had no idea who the good guys and bad guys were in this story.

I shook my head and continued on, hoping that I could just find Elizabeth and get the hell out of here with no more complications. But that idea was clearly no dice. Not twenty feet away from the statue, a poster hung in the middle of the street that read "_You shall know the False Shepherd by his mark!" _Between the words was a cartoonish painting of what looked almost like a claw, with two glowing letters on it.

A.D.

The same two letters on my hand.

This could have been a coincidence. It could have been possible that somehow, I stumbled into a city with some sort of criminal that just happened to have the same letters in the same place as me for completely different reasons. My gut said that wasn't the case. And even if it was, if his only identifying mark was the letters, that was going to be a problem for me regardless. On the surface, these people looked like normal, if affluent, citizens, but it only took five minutes of listening to them talk to realize that they were completely brainwashed by this Father Comstock guy. I wasn't interested in finding out what would happen if they got their hands on me, thinking I was some 'false Shepherd', but I knew for sure it wouldn't be pretty.

Seriously though, did they really think the guy was going to have fucking claws? These people were like loons in a nuthouse.

I passed another closed street, and when I backtracked to go around, I began to hear singing and see people again lining the streets. Looked like I was gonna pass through the raffle whether I wanted to or not. The small area lining in front of the stage was filled with a crowd of people, all swaying together and singing to the direction of a man on the stage in a top hat and a large mustache. As I began to make my way past the crowd to the open air on the other side, he held his hands up for silence, and the crowd seemed to vibrate with excited energy. What the hell could they possibly be raffling off that had them this excited? A number of people were holding baseballs; maybe it was something to do with a sports game.

"And now, the 1912 raffle has officially begun!"

"Mister!" someone yelled. I continued walking – there was no way they were talking to me, whoever it was, but stopped to look when I heard the cry again.

"Wouldn't you like a ball?" another young women asked from the front of the stage. Just like the boothkeeper that had given me the vigor, she had a basket slung around her neck, but hers was filled with the baseballs I'd seen everyone holding. I guess that was how they were picking numbers.

I, in fact, _didn't _want a damn ball, but there was already a group of people looking at me curiously and the young woman was waving to me and yoohooing, so I crossed quickly to where she was standing so I could talk to her without an audience.

"Sorry, no sale." I said. She giggled and swayed, fluttering her eyelashes at me when I started to move away.

"Silly, there's never a charge for the raffle." she replied. "You been sleepin' under a rock?"

I rolled my eyes, but picked up a baseball anyway, just to make her happy. It had 77 written on it in thick red marker.

She was looking at me expectantly, as if she was invested in whatever number I got, so I showed it to her, and her eyes went wide with delight.

"Seventy seven..." she said as if there was some significance to it, "That's a lucky number. I'll be rooting for you." she said lowly, before stepping away to melt into the crowd. It took me a minute to remember why that number actually did seem to have some significance, but then the telegram the Luteces had sent came back to mind.

The announcer held his hands out to get the crowd's attention.

"Bring me _the bowl!_" at his words, the crowd began to cheer and applaud. A large bowl was brought out by another assistant, and the announcer plucked a card out of it and held it up while he read.

"The winner is number seventy seven!"

"Well, whaddya know..." I muttered darkly. I felt as if I were the lead in some play or game, and everyone else around me knew what was going on except for me. The extraordinary amount of coincidences in this place were jumbling together in my head, but what were the chances of the Luteces knowing I'd pick 77? How could you predict the winner of a lottery? There was no way to even tell if I'd be here; no one had coerced me to come to the raffle, I'd done it on my own, and it was just as likely I'd have missed it or refused to participate. There was no fucking way to know about this.

"Number 77, come and claim your prize!" since I was already standing at the front of the crowd, I didn't have far to go, or a chance to get out. The curtain at the back of the stage was rising, presumably to show me what I'd won. I tried to back up and slip away, but people had already seen the numbers on my baseball and crowded around me, so there was no escape. When I looked back to the stage, two people, a black girl and a white man, were shuffling to the front. I thought at first that they were here to hand me whatever I'd won, but they didn't have anything in their hands, and they didn't look very happy to be helping with the raffle. So unhappy that the woman was shrieking.

"First throw!" the announcer shouted. I cocked an eyebrow, trying to figure out what he'd meant, when I realized that the two people on stage weren't walking on their own; they were standing on a platform that was inching forward. The closer they got, the better I could see what was keeping them there; their hands were pulled behind their backs, and it looked like they'd been lashed to wooden poles behind him.

The negress was sobbing, the dirt on her cheeks criss-crossed by tearstains, and she was wearing a bag of a dress and no shoes. The man, a big blonde with only a vest on, was struggling violently and crying in desperation, "It was me, it was all me! Please!" But the crowd behind me was singing and clapping at the show, and I was rooted to the spot, unable to take my eyes away.

To be honest, I hadn't dealt much with blacks in my life. They worked mostly labor and service jobs, and they kept to themselves and out of the way. There was a black community in New York, Harlem, but I'd never been there; the blacks in Colorado worked on the railroads too, but not anywhere near where I did. I knew vaguely that they were fighting for their rights, and that a lot of people still felt they didn't deserve them, since they mostly weren't as smart as white folks and took up a lot of honest jobs. I'd never heard of a self-respecting white man being with a Negro; with enough pretty young women around, why would you need to?

But that didn't mean I wanted to_ stone _them for it. It wasn't my business what skeletons other men kept, unless it was money owed or a deal to be settled. I didn't see what the fun was in beating a couple of people to death.

When I didn't immediately throw the baseball, the announcer turned to me with an unkind look in his eye, took in my state of dress (significantly cheaper than the other Joes around here), and his nose crinkled slightly, as if he'd smelled something foul.

"Well, come on, are you gonna throw it... or are you taking your coffee _black _these days?"

The sneer on his lips made my blood boil. I didn't tolerate disrespect, especially not from some high-handed son of a bitch in a suit that thought his asshole was cleaner than everyone else's. If he wanted me to throw the baseball, I was gonna throw it all right. Right at his -

Somebody caught my arm before the baseball left my hand. I turned to see a copper studying my hand with narrowed eyes.

"It's him!" the announcer bent down, still sneering, as another pig grabbed my other arm, keeping me from walloping the first one or jumping away. He clearly knew I had been close to nailing him right in the nose with that baseball, and he looked down that same nose in an ugly way as the cops tried to wrestle my arms behind my back.

"Now, where'd you get that brand, boy? Don't you know that makes you the backstabbing, snake-in-the-grass false Shepherd?" he said viciously. He stood up and threw his arms wide, looking out into the crowd. "And we ain't lettin' no false Shepherd into our flock! Show 'em what we got planned, boys!"

The guard to my left pulled out some sort of metal weapon, with three hooks that spun like a sawblade; clearly by his smile, his intent was to introduce it to my neck. I reacted before I had a moment to even think about it. Time slowed down as I tossed the baseball into the air. Both guards watched it, confused, and I took the momentary relax of the man's grip on my wrist to wrench it away and grab him by the back of the neck. His face went straight into the hooked weapon. There was a muffled, animalistic scream as he fell to his knees and blood sprayed on everything in front of him; the weapon, buried too far into his face to hold on to, was pulled out of the other copper's hand as he collapsed onto his back.

I grabbed the weapon and turned to the other cop, who'd lost his cocky smile and was now facing me warily, baton at the ready. Not ready enough; one hook and he was down for the count. Two more had descended the stairs and I took care of 'em without blinking. This thing was a monster of a weapon. It ripped through flesh and bone like tissue paper, leaving behind a wake of bodies with chunks of meat for heads. I didn't have the time or energy to worry about it; besides, I may have been dishing out the damage, but I didn't have the look of glee on my face that cop had when he'd been about to put it into _my _throat. The crowd had disappeared in a hurry, and with an empty street for the moment, I bent down to the check the bodies of the two policemen for anything potentially useful. One of the cops I'd downed had been carrying a pistol; I picked it up and checked that it was loaded, then held it at the ready as I looked around for the best escape route.

The bridge that ran in the direction of Memorial island had unattached itself and floated out of reach, so I was forced to my right and across an airship that was tethered to the dock. When I looked down to the end of the airship, I let out a small noise of surprise and ducked back down the gangway just as a volley of bullets flew in my direction. The automatic machine gun attached to the bow of the ship stopped its attack when I disappeared out of sight.

How was I gonna get past that thing? My pistol wouldn't take it out, and I couldn't get close enough to destroy it with the hook. I was at a stalemate, which was a dangerous place to be when everyone else knew exactly where I was.

But then again, maybe I didn't have to destroy it...

I flung myself out of hiding and channeled some of the energy in my chest down my arm and in the gun's direction. It materialized again as the green ghost, which, letting out a silent wail, disappeared into the gun just as it had with the automated ticket dispenser. Glowing a violent, bright green, it turned out over the bow and began shooting at something on the other side. A scream of pain told me it had found its mark.

On the other side of the ship, three more policemen were taking cover against the ship's gun. I went to a knee just beside it and took aim down the sights. Pop, pop, pop. All three hit the ground. Unsure of whether the possession was a permanent change, I disabled the automatic gun on the ship and reloaded my pistol before vaulting over the side into yet another deserted thoroughfare.

Fighting my way down the street was like shooting fish in a barrel. Something told me the cops in this little picture-perfect side of town spend more time eating donuts than fighting crime, and even the automatic guns weren't much of a problem with my handy little vigor.

"Call out the fireman!" one of the cops yelled as I was sighting in on him. I put a bullet right between his eyes, just as two women ran across the street from a doorway. One turned to look behind her – NOT in my direction - and screamed. It was like they didn't even notice me as they ran down the street, which considering I'd been painted as some sort of bloody mass-murderer child-kidnapping false god, probably meant there was something else around here I needed to worry about.

The street got strangely quiet after that. I darted down it a good ways without any harassment before stopping at a cracked gate. I put my hand out to yank it open, and pulled it back, cursing. It was scalding to the touch. What the hell was going on?

I put one shoe around the gate and hooked it with my foot to open it just enough to slip through. A blast of heat hit me in the face on the other side – in front of me, a man on fire was standing in the middle of the square. He was wearing some sort of fireman's suit, but there was no possible way he couldn't feel the flames – except he didn't look like he was feeling them. He just looked pissed.

I darted behind a cart just as a ball of flame came flying at me. It hit the gate and exploded like a firework. When I leaned out to fire back, one hit me in the arm, and I screamed in pain; I swatted at the flames furiously to put them out, but the skin where I'd been hit was blistered and angry-looking.

I waited until a lull in the fireballs and then darted to a closer cart so I could take better aim. Another volley of fireballs came past me, and I waited them out patiently; when I judged he was done for a minute, I leaned out, took aim, and fired off three quick shots. Two hit in the chest, one in shoulder; the fireman howled in pain, reeling, then got ahold of himself and began charging forward, the flames around him going wild. I took a deep breath, sighted in, and let one loose right between his eyes. He dropped like a sack of bricks and in a flash was gone, burned to a cinder.

What the fuck was wrong with these people? Who volunteered to become a crazy man who lit himself on fire? The entire block around where the firefight had been was in flames; one shop off to the right was already little more than ash. The spot where the fireman had fallen was covered in a giant scorchmark; next to it lay a blackened bottle. When I picked it up, I could see that it was yet another vigor. This one was red, with a horned woman on the top and a devil's face on the front. It was labeled 'Devil's Kiss.'

Well, you only live once. I pulled the stopper out and took a swig. This one burned all the way down, and then continued to burn all the way to the tips of my fingertips and toes. It felt like my whole body was being set on fire, and as I looked down at my hands, they began to glow red and blister, as if there was lava in my veins. I let out a choked cry as my vision went red, then screamed as my hands burst into flame and my nails crumbled into ash; the pain was more unbearable than anything I'd ever felt before, more painful than I had thought the human body could bear.

Then, in a flash, it was over. The flames receded into my skin and the feeling of being burned alive faded. I couldn't stop the rush of adrenaline in my veins or my panting; I had to stand in place and stare at my hands until I could get my head under control. Luckily, it seemed like the arrival of the fireman had scared off all life in the area, but the smoke was making me cough and heave, so I started forward again to find some cleaner air.

The next block had another automatic machine gun protecting it; I ducked behind a wall until it finished firing, then leaned out to lob a fireball at it. I couldn't tell you how I picked which vigor to use; it was as if I willed there to be fire, and it came. The first fell just short of the gun; the second hit it square on, and the explosion was violent, even from the other side of the square.

The restless whir my chest was starting to feel a little thin, as if my energy was sapped. I was pretty beat up too, and my legs and lungs were aching from all the running I had done. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten, besides the apple I'd pilfered at the fair; and now they had my scent. If I didn't find the girl but soon, the whole affair was over.

When I rounded the next corner, I almost sighed in relief. The building in front of me, hastily abandoned from the looks of it, was a restaurant. One of the tables to the side had a full loaf of bread still sitting on the serving platter; I picked it up and headed towards the front doors, intent on finding a place to hole up for a minute and eat in peace.

The restaurant, from the looks of it, was top-shelf; there was a menu board advertising beef roasts, turtle soup, boiled potatoes, and extravagant desserts. There was a coat check in the corner, coats still hanging, and to the left, a huge room filled with tables and a bar.

No matter how often those two fucking showed up, I was still always surprised. This time, the siblings were standing across the dining room at the other doorway, which was deserted but for a man passed out in his seat and faintly snoring. The male Lutece was boredly polishing the bar, the sister standing at the ready with something on a plate.

"We have company." male Lutece announced, not even looking up.

"We do indeed."

"Why are you _following me._" I demanded. Both, at the exact same time, snorted.

"_We _were already here."

"Why are _you _following us?"

"I..." I didn't finish my sentence. All it would do was waste my breath. Instead, I wandered over to see what Lutece was holding. It was a large bottle, with a bright yellow liquid in it. She held the platter up to me as if she thought I would drink it.

"You'll find that handy in a pinch."

"The difference between life and death." I picked it up and swirled it around, eyeing the liquid suspiciously. It looked like piss.

"This looks like piss." I said, apparently to the dismay of the Luteces. The sister sighed, and fixed a glare on me.

"Just. Drink it." she said shortly. I paused and gave her a look, to let her know I wasn't doing it just because she was nagging at me to, but then unstoppered it and took a hesitant swig. It tasted oily and salty, and it was all I could do not to spit it right in her face. I swallowed after a moment of gagging, and suppressed the urge to vomit.

"What was that?" I gasped.

"Surprising." she replied. I thought at first she was giving me a snotty answer, but then I realized she was just making a comment. Still a snotty one, though.

"Surprising that it worked?" male Lutece quipped.

"Surprising that it didn't kill him."

"Well, a magnetic-repulsive field around one's body _can _come in handy." Lutece stopped and looked up at me, leaving the rag on the bar as he walked over to his sister. I had the sudden urge to murder him.

"_If _it doesn't kill you."

"A fair point."

"Is there a chance you could explain what the hell is going on?" I demanded, slamming the bottle Lutece had given me on the floor. It shattered into a thousand pieces, the remaining liquid soaking into the carpet, but neither Lutece looked at it. They were both staring at me, unblinking.

"Frankly, we don't know anymore." female Lutece said at last.

"The story has changed, since our hero has decided to be uncooperative."

"I suppose we'll have to take notes this time. So try not to get yourself killed." female Lutece turned on her heel and strode away, leaving the plate on a table. Male Lutece turned to follow her, then stopped to look back at me one last time.

"There won't be anyone here for at least another half hour. I suggest you take the rest while you can." he said, then followed his sister out the door. Like always, when I followed them to see where they were going, they had disappeared.

_**A/N: **_So I hope nobody was overly offended by my portrayal of Booker. Since this story is told in his POV, I am attempting to use a narrative that reflects his thoughts and feelings, and I wanted him to be as close to a man of his time as possible. At that time, racism happened both through actions and through thoughts; it wasn't uncommon for people to actually believe that blacks were mentally inferior. Please don't take it as my own personal feelings against anybody, because they sure as hell aren't. I also disagreed with the choice to throw the baseball at the couple or the announcer in the original game, because whites in that time for the most part didn't have the same revulsion towards racism as we do nowadays, so expecting Booker to make waves solely because of that when he was told to lay low in the game didn't fit the timeframe of the game either.

Anyway, it looks like people are reading, which is awesome, but I've only received one review (thanks FreeLancer93!). Reviews are super important to writers both for the story and for us personally, so please drop me a line and let me know what you think.


	5. The Lamb

_**A/N: **_Hey guys. Here's the next chapter. We're finally getting somewhere; hopefully the beginning wasn't too slow for you, but things should pick up from here on. As always, warnings about racism, religion bashing, and graphic violence. Also, this still isn't betaed, so all mistakes are my own.

**Chapter 4: The Lamb**

I was damn glad that I'd taken Lutece's advice and cooled my heels for a bit, because on the other side of the Blue Ribbon, it was hours before I had a chance to catch my breath. Police ships and reinforcements came from all sides; I was lucky that the area I was in seemed to be a service district, because the rooftops I was crossing were filled with boxes and crates to take cover behind. One rooftop found me crouching behind a pillar for almost an hour, because the amount of bodies they were sending my way was in the dozens. Without the shield the Luteces had given me, which stopped a helluva lot of damage before it broke, I would have drawn my last breath in this city. With their help, the policemen got to instead.

The upside of the body count was that ammo was never a problem; several of the police had even been carrying machine guns, which was a good upgrade from the shitty pistol I'd been relying on. I got a good ways along by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, but I was stopped at every turn it seemed from getting any closer to Monument Island. Eventually, I was forced through a balcony door and into someone's house; I hoped as I pushed the door open that it was uninhabited, but I knew better than to expect it to be.

The first person I ran into was a woman, wearing a maroon dress that resembled the others I'd seen Columbian women in; she started to shriek, but covered her mouth with her hands to muffle the sound almost immediately. A man came running around the corner, and stopped to put his hands up when my hand flew to my gun.

"It's him, the one they're looking for!" the woman said shrilly through her hands, swaying on her feet. The man turned on his heel to glare at her and put a finger to his lips.

"Shh, keep your voice down." he whispered. All three of us stood stock still as a policeman banged on the door and demanded entrance. When nobody answered, he moved on. They both turned to look at me nervously; even when I pointed the machine gun at the floor and pointed towards the hallway, trying to indicate I was just going to move on, their faces didn't change. But they didn't try to stop me either.

The reason they didn't want the police raiding made itself clear when I ducked into one of the rooms, looking for the way out. It was crammed full of beds, with a few negros deep asleep in some of them, others covered in belongings that indicated they were also being used. This must have been some sort of halfway house or something, and I'd bet my last nickel that some of these guys weren't there legally. But there was no quarrel here for me, so I moved on.

I thought the police hadn't known I was in this house. I was wrong. They were waiting for me on the other side of the door out, five of them with pistols and machine guns, and if the Luteces hadn't given me that shield, I would have gotten myself killed like the dumbass I was, thinking I was home-free and could stroll out whenever I felt like. I managed to take out three, using the doors as cover, before a scream behind me let me know that they weren't just attacking from the front anymore. When a gunshot followed the scream and the house fell silent, I tugged the doors to the outside closed and slid a fireplace poker behind the handles to keep them from just wrenching them open. It wasn't much help, but it would give me a moment or two. I crept back to the hallway that exited the room and peeked around the corner to see if the coppers were making their way down to where I was.

They were still in the other room, not yet glancing in my direction. I could see two in the part of the room visible from the hallway, looking off to the left. The hem of a maroon dress and a leg lay on the floor, with the rest of the woman hidden behind the wall where she'd fallen. An angry shout, another two shots, and a gurgle told me they'd found the man of the house. I was already taking advantage of the distraction, halfway up the hallway and hiding in the bathroom, the better to take them by surprise. The first copper walked right past the entrance to the bathroom, probably assuming it was empty, and got a bullet to the chest for his trouble; the second, thinking I'd shot him from the room down the hall, and not the bathroom doorway, tried to take cover in the negros' room and got his just as easily. But there was at least one more to deal with, and the door I'd held shut with the poker was rattling. I was just about to lean out the doorway and take my chances when one of the Negros appeared in the doorway across from me, and made the mistake of trying to run down the hallway towards where the last copper was hiding. He didn't make it two steps before his head exploded in a red mist. The second Negro, who had been hot on his heels, was a little luckier; he turned the right way out the door, and as the copper was trying to take him down, it gave me the time I needed to put one in his skull.

His luck didn't hold out when the two pigs that were outside finally got the door open. He was caught in the middle of the room, defenseless, and they emptied enough lead in him to drop a horse, instead of just a man. I ignored his gurgling and sprayed the doorway with bullets, and just like that, the firefight was over. Almost ten people lay dead in the house.

Before I left, I put the poker back in the door and checked the bodies, making sure there were no tongues left to wag about where I'd gone. The cops in this room and the two Negros were dead as doornails; one of the others was moaning, eyes closed, so I gave him a last bullet to the heart to put him out of his misery. The woman was still staring out across the room, her mouth frozen in a scream and her dead eyes wide in shock. The only other soul still hanging on was the man; the right side of his chest was soaked with blood, as was the carpet, but the look he gave me was not afraid, only glazed with pain.

"Did they... did they get Jerome and Charlie?" he panted, clutching at the bullet wound. His knuckles were white.

I guessed he was talking about the two Negros that had run. "Yeah, they shot them both down." I replied. He closed his eyes, then nodded tightly; his expression looked sad. For a strange moment, I had the sudden urge to apologize for their deaths. I guess in some way it was my fault, even if I wasn't holding the gun.

Even with blood still pumping from his chest and his face white with shock, he turned his head and spit on the floor. "Fucking pigs... They shot us down like... dogs, for nothing more than... than trying to give them a chance to live right. I never should have... left Chicago." he muttered haltingly, gaspingly.

"If you'd minded your own business, you'd be minus those bullets right now." I replied.

He huffed a laugh, then groaned, and the hand on his chest slipped a fraction.

"They live and... die... just like we do, boy... maybe you wouldn't... think, think that way if someone had tried... to give you a leg up in this world. Men should... help... one ano..." his words trailed off and his eyes fluttered shut, then the hand he'd had on his wound slipped off his chest to lay on the floor lifelessly. Something inside me clenched tightly at the thought that he'd never gotten to finish his sentence; for some reason I couldn't fathom, I wanted to hear what he'd had to say. Now nobody could hear it.

For a moment, I battled a sudden urge to put his body to rights, and lay his hands across his chest before he got the stiffs that came with death; it was a sudden, passing fancy that I'd never had before, and I didn't know where it came from, only that for a moment, it seemed like the right thing to do. Then my common sense kicked back in, and I stood up and snorted at my own foolery. It wasn't like he or anyone else here was gonna benefit from being gussied up. They'd still be dead. Still, the uncomfortable feeling low in my gut didn't cease; it followed me all the way to the front door, and only eased when I took a rag from the bathroom, dipped it in the blood pooling from one of the bodies, and dragged it across the outside of the door, to let the absent inhabitants know when they returned that it was a bad idea to enter. I did the same to the other door, then dropped the rag on the carpet and left, ignoring the urge to look back.

–

The buildings and areas I passed through started to blur together as I made my way across the city, getting closer to my endpoint only by short steps. I passed through an abandoned Wild West show, and then some sort of church called the 'Order of the Raven', that was covered in rotting food and mangy crows. The church had a statue of Comstock in the front and the inside one of John Wilkes Booth – it took a ridiculous painting on the wall of President Lincoln with demon horns for me to remember that Booth was the guy who'd shot him. Who'd make a statue of someone like that? The same people who'd build a fairly nice-looking church and then fill it with birds and rotting food, I guessed. Seemed like no matter where you went, people were the same; even picture-perfect Columbia was filled with fucking lunatics.

The church only got worse the farther in I got. Signs all over the walls proclaimed that the Order of the Raven was 'Protecting Our Race' – which was probably the reason they were demonizing President Lincoln, since he'd been the one to free the slaves. Behind a bookshelf on the upper levels was a hidden room with a cell built into it; it held one bed, some rotting food, and a lot of old bloodstains. It wasn't hard to guess who they had been keeping in there.

I didn't realize exactly how crazy these fanatics were until I came to a door that was chained from the other side; I could hear someone screaming, so I only cracked it open enough to see what was going on. A man in the next room was chained up against a wall, struggling and shouting. One of the men in the robes of the Order was standing on the other side of the room, looking at him wordlessly; as I watched, he lifted a hand, and suddenly, a whole group of crows was on the chained man, ripping at his flesh with beaks and claws. By the time they dispersed, the man on the wall was a human-shaped lump of wet, glistening flesh. His screams seemed to echo against the stone walls of the room.

By the time I'd forced the door open, the robed man had disappeared into thin air. I ran into the next room, which was filled with grass and plants and a statue of the Lady Comstock, and something slammed into me from the side, sending me tumbling head over heels. It was the robed man, another group of crows swirling around him. I aimed my pistol and let loose, but it was as if the shots didn't even faze him. He charged me, and I braced for impact, but then, suddenly, he was gone again, and only the crows flapped around the room. Something told me he wasn't gone for good though; even as I got behind the statue for protection, the crows stopped in the corner of the room _and he fucking __appeared out of thin air. _Some of the crows circling him darted in my direction; the volley of bullets from my machine gun stopped some of them, but even the whole clip had as much effect on him as my pistol had. With crows darting at my eyes and ripping at my clothes, I finally dropped the machine gun and lobbed a fireball at him, and was rewarded with an inhuman screech. The crows abandoned me and flew back to their master, but he was beyond saving. He fell to the ground, the scent of cooking meat thick around him, and lay still.

When he'd burned down to just a slow smolder, I kicked him over to look for anything useful on his body. I didn't touch the coffin strapped to his back, because I didn't want to know what the hell he had in it, but I found some silver eagles and another vigor. This one had the head of a raven. When I drank it, the world again swirled around me and I had a vision that a raven with entrails trailing from its beak landed on my hand and looked at me imploringly, as if asking me what I wished from it.

When the world stopped moving, I made it two steps before I fell to my knees and vomited. The wet sounds were loud in the silence of the church garden; nobody was here to hear them except the rotting corpses hanging cages above me, and the charred lump of flesh laying on the ground. When one of the ravens landed to peck at the mess I'd left on the steps, I pulled my pistol and shot it in the breast. Then I got up and ran up the steps and through the next room out of the church, praying for the first time in my memory that I'd never have to walk through a place like that again.

I was lucky that the rest of the way to Monument Island was pretty smooth sailing. I could see the island from the other side of the church; when I got to the station where the airships waited to ferry customers, it was clear it had been closed and abandoned for a long time, but then it was only a matter of using the skylines like I'd seen the coppers doing before to get there. My mind was in a daze, and my body moved automatically, as if I was simply along for the ride.

I didn't come back to myself until I flipped a switch to move some freight off the lines, and the gates swung shut behind me, trapping me on the platform that held the controls. In front of me, a black-and-white screen that had held a picture of Comstock fluttered to life, and to my surprise, began to speak. Something about his face told me this wasn't a recording.

"I know why you've come, false Shepherd." he started. "I've seen every sin that blackens your soul. Wounded Knee... the Pinkertons... the drinking, the _gambling. _And of course, Anna. And now to repay a debt, you've come for my lamb. But not all debts can be repaid, _Booker." _he spit my name out like a curse, his eyes boring into me as if they could see right into my soul. How he knew so much about me, I couldn't figure out. It wasn't a secret that I'd been at Wounded Knee, even if I didn't talk about it. And any Joe that had seen me drunk and stumbling through the bar could tell I had my own set of demons in the form of gambling and booze, but to know all of it suggested that someone had been hanging out, keeping an eye on me. Someone had ratted. Only how someone had managed to do that, especially after I'd dropped my life and moved to Colorado without warning, it seemed impossible.

"You don't know me, pal." I shouted at the screen. I didn't expect him to answer, but I really wasn't surprised when he did.

"Prophecy is my business, Mr. Dewitt. As blood is yours." I rankled at that, but there was truth in his words. Even my ten years in Colorado, working like an honest man hadn't changed that fact. If it wasn't true, I wouldn't be here terrorizing a city to pay off my own debt.

"Do you know why these men will die for me? Because I've seen their future and their glory, and hence they are content. What brought you to Columbia, Booker? 'Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt?' This will end in bloodshed. Then again, it always does with you, doesn't it? It always ends in blood." that was the last thing Comstock said before the screen fizzled out and returned to the still picture. My vision went blurry, and something wet trickled down my face; when I wiped my fingers across my face, I realized my nose was bleeding.

"You've come to lead my lamb astray, but thy crook is bent, and thy path is twisted. **Go back to the Sodom from which you came!**" with those parting words, the zeppelin that had been broadcasting Comstock lumbered off, leaving empty sky behind it. I growled and wiped my nose on my sleeve, then turned to continue through the building, looking for an exit. Comstock thought that he was some sort of prophet, and it looked like he had a few tricks up his sleeve that I couldn't explain, but that didn't change the fact that his city wasn't the paradise he made it out to be. I'd seen some of the secrets that hid in these floating buildings, and they were fucking terrifying. Innocents shot down by the police in pursuit of me, hidden prisons and torture chambers locked away in churches, and gun turrets on every corner. This place was no paradise, it was a sham, and something told me I'd see more of its dark side before I was on my way home.

Before I had found my way to the exit, there was an explosion, and the floor under me rocked. Ahead, there was a gaping hole in the side of the building, and no way forward. Shit. What was I supposed to do?

Out the smoking hole, the zeppelin Comstock had addressed me from floated, clearly the case of the explosion. I scanned it quickly and noticed a hook I could probably leap on to. With no better option, I jumped.

A pair of guards came out to meet me; I leaped at one from where I was hanging and slammed into him with the skyhook, then turned a shot the other before she had a chance to take aim. Inside I took out a few more, scanning quickly for something that could help me out. The inside of the zeppelin was surpringly small and empty; there was only one door, which I hoped led to the control room. If I could figure out the controls, I could use this baby to get to Monument Island.

The control room was empty except for a woman in a habit, praying quietly in front of a shrine to Comstock. I expected her to scream, and told her I wouldn't hurt her, but she didn't even look at me, so I figured she probably wasn't a threat and turned to the control panel to see what I could do with it. Before I'd done more than yank a switch down, a flat-topped airship came into view in front of me. On it, a half dozen men in armor kneeled, circled around a man with a microphone.

What the hell?

"The lord forgives everything, but I'm just the Prophet." Father Comstock announced over the microphone. I didn't know if he could see me through the glass, but his gaze landed right on me regardless. "So I don't have to. Amen." That was all he said. No guns pointed, no more explosions, but there was no way he was just going to let me go, right?

"Amen." a feminine voice repeated behind me as his airship lifted away. I turned, pistol at the ready, but the woman in the habit was nowhere near me, and her hands were empty of weapons. The only threat in the room was the torch in her hand and, I noticed, a puddle of oil at her feet. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. She wasn't really gonna light herself on _fire, _was she?

She dropped the torch. It caught in the oil and burst into flame, and suddenly I realized she must have been working the whole time Comstock had been talking, because through the door, I could see that fire was licking up both sides of the zeppelin, leaving only the middle free.

_Jesus. _The woman was already a burning, silent silhouette; she dropped to what was left of her knees as I raced out of the control room and through the next, looking wildly for a way out.

The back of the zeppelin had opened, or burned away, leaving a hole into empty air; I didn't even stop to think before I leaped from the zeppelin and plummeted. I thought for a desperate moment that it was the end of the line for me; then, below I saw a skyline, snaking through the air and hopefully in reach. I reached desperately with the skyhook, felt the magnets yank me forward, then amazingly I was hanging from the line, my shoulder screaming with pain as I barreled downwards.

Holy shit, that was close. The skyline tracked just above an island, and I engaged the brakes and dropped to the solid ground below, falling right onto my ass. The stones beneath me were solid and unyielding and enough to almost make me weep with joy.

I fucking hated this place. I hated the fucking floating islands, and the death flights from one to another on a piece of rail and a little metal hook. I hated the people that were so fucking brainwashed they would _set themselves on fire _to protect a man that did nothing but talk in riddles all day. I hated the mechanical horses, and the stupid vigors, and the talking vending machines. I hated everything about this place.

The zeppelin was falling through the clouds still, the outside of it caught in flames now. From here, it looked slow and almost peaceful, instead of a giant metal contraption of death, plummeting through the clouds to the Earth miles and miles below. I watched it until it was out of sight, then got to my feet, rubbing at my aching shoulder.

It looked like I was finally at Monument Island. The sign above was still lit, except for the 'T' in Monument that was dark and hanging sideways. There were two docks for the airships I'd seen back at the station; both were empty. When I ascended the stairs, I could see that the posters hanging on either side of the doorway read 'Closed by Order of the Prophet', and there were wooden police blocks in front of the entrance, though the whole place was abandoned. The only sound was the blaring of a siren and the two vending machines on either side of the doorway. I ignored them and yanked the door open.

It led into a garden, with an empty fountain in the middle. The fountain was dry and covered in mold; on the other side of it, a menacing looking gate stood, covered in 'Closed – Off limits' signs and chains. From here, it didn't look like a tourist attraction, it looked like a prison.

I had to jump the gate with the skyhook to get in. The inside of the building looked like it had been turned from an entryway to a workroom; there were lockers up against one wall with thick overcoats and masks hanging in them, and old signs and decorative pieces covered in sheets against another. The far end of the room was covered in more bright yellow caution signs – 'Past this point 12 hour Quarantine', 'Specimen is Dangerous', and '**Danger **Do Not Approach the Specimen'. The picture I'd been given by the Luteces had been of a regular-looking young dame, but from the way this place was rigged up, they were making her out to be some type of crazy monster. What were they so afraid of? Wasn't this the 'lamb' that Comstock was always talking about me corrupting? From the looks of it, she was more dangerous to me than I was to her.

The next room held a bunch of scientific equipment and a giant board labeled 'Specimen Morphology'. I didn't know what that meant, but it had a growth chart, labeled by age, and some strange pictures of hands that looked like they were just bones. More signs were set up on the other side, but there wasn't anyone but me to read them; the floors were covered in papers and some of the machines were spitting sparks. I was careful to get past those without getting hit. I passed huge generators, with electricity arcing from one to the other above my head, and some sort of machine that had toys and books set up in glass containers, with levers in front of them. When I pulled the lever in front of the toy bear, the container lit up with electricity and the bear flickered and shook; when the current disappeared, the bear had changed colors. Interesting, but not very useful. They'd built all this stuff to change the color of some toys?

The next area held a darkroom to one side, and a projector room with chairs on the other. The darkroom still had photos hanging to dry, showing pictures of a young woman with dark hair. The projector, when I clicked it on, was recording of the same dame doing different activities – painting, writing on a chalkboard, singing. They'd been watching her. And then showing these recordings to a room full of people. But why?

I passed through another room that had a huge machine set up in the center, still running. There were pieces of equipment I couldn't even begin describe scattered all over; the signs called it a 'siphon' of some sort. I picked up a voxophone laying on a desk and turned it on, listening to it passively as I looked through the desk and at the machine behind it. It was a recording of Father Comstock, talking about his 'lamb'. From the way he talked, it sounded like he was sick, and he expected his lamb to take over for him and run Columbia when he was gone. Then he mentioned me, how I was coming to 'lead the lamb astray', and that he was going to stick around until I was out of the picture. I snorted at that; he had another thing coming if he thought he could stop me. He'd already sent the coppers to kill me, run me from one end of the city to the other, and then set a zeppelin on fire with me in it, but I was still here, and I was staying here until I got that girl. Anyway, if I were her, and this was where I'd been kept, I wouldn't be feeling any sort of kindness towards the man who'd put me here.

I crossed the room, took an elevator down a level, then exited into another tiny room with a hallway off to one side. The further into this place I got, the more it gave me the willies. This was no place for a girl to be locked up in. To me it looked like someone should be in here doing experiments on monkeys or something. In front and to the right of me, stations covered in controls stood under what looked like closed hatches. I pulled the levers, and the hatches opened like windows into other rooms. These didn't look like labs; they were furnished like real rooms, in soft feminine colours and tasteful furniture. One held a bed and a bunch of musical instruments. The other had a chalkboard covered in writing and and bunch of locks scattered on a table. This must be how they were watching here, through these windows. Did she know that she was being watched? The rooms were both empty, so I couldn't tell for sure.

Further down the hallway was a sign that read 'specimen tracker'; when I pushed the button, 'Dressing Room' lit up. That must be where she was, so that was where I needed to go.

When I got to the next room with a metal hatch in it, it opened to show a pretty dark haired girl, examining a picture. That was her. She was smiling contently, as I watched, she turned to where I was standing and began to fuss with her hair. It was as if she had no idea I was here. Maybe she didn't; maybe to her, this window looked like a mirror or something. I kept watching. She winced and dropped the photo, then scowled down at her hand. Must've broken a nail or something. Her clothes were simple compared to the elaborate get-ups the other women here wore; a white blouse with a blue ascot and a long blue skirt. Her hair was tied back with a blue ribbon. She glared at her finger a moment longer, then picked the picture back up and gazed at it longingly, before turning and disappearing into another room. The picture was of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The next hatch opened up to the room where she'd been painting. The canvas, yet another depiction of the Eiffel Tower, was still sitting on an easel, and she turned to look at it with a sigh, before raising her hands as if she was going to tear it apart. At first, I thought she had; then there was a blinding flash, and it was as if a projector had turned on and was showing a picture of a street in front of her. The projection flickered, then solidified; now it was as if there was a whole street jammed into the room with her. I couldn't believe my eyes. An ambulance came barreling down the street, sirens wailing; she looked at it in alarm, then made a motion as if she was slamming a window, and the street was gone in a cloud of smoke.

She put a hand to her face and ran from the room as I looked on in shock. What the hell had just happened? That street had looked real. Not real like a projector, real like it was _actually there, _in colour and with sound, which I'd never seen a projector do before. No matter how many ways I tried to explain it to myself, I couldn't figure out how she could have done that. Well, whatever that was, it had nothin' to do with the job at hand.

She was in the library now, a big open room with a giant window that looked out to the clouds below. Hopefully she'd stay there for a minute while I figured out how to get into where she was. I looped around to the only area I hadn't explored and found a heavy metal door. When I pushed it open, something on the other side pushed back; turned out it led onto an open platform, buffeted by gusting winds and protected only by a chain strung along the open edge.

Holy shit. This job was getting worse all the time. I was getting a real fear of being up in the air without anything to protect me, especially after almost dying in a flaming airship and then falling through thin air with no idea if there was anything to catch me. But it didn't look like there was any other way to get to the girl. I could do this. I could.

With only slightly shaking legs, I inched along the walkway, keeping tight to the building to my right. The wind swirled around me, tugging at my clothes and threatening to throw me off balance. Around a corner, and then up some stairs, and I was to another hatch. When it swung open and I went back into a room with four full walls and no wind trying to knock me into space, I slumped in relief.

It looked like I was almost there. There was another empty, circular room with a door on the other side; I bet if I got through it, I'd find a way into the specimen rooms. I was halfway across the rusty metal floor when something snapped and the floor lurched; another crack, and I was falling. Again.

A ledge in front of me stopped my fall before I hit the ground; I tried to scramble up it before my hand slipped and came face to face with the girl. The specimen. Father Comstock's lamb. I was in the library I'd just seen her in before, gripping the edge of the raised platform next to the window. I offered a sheepish 'hello', still trying not to slip, and she screamed, startling me enough that I lost my grip and fell to the floor, flat on my back. Still screaming, she threw a book at my head.

This was kind of a bad start.

–

_**A/N: **_Elizabeth is finally here! I'm really excited, as she's possibly my favorite female character ever.

So I know I haven't changed much so far in the story, but I promise changes are coming. I got another review (thanks quest!), but I'm still looking to you guys for feedback on how you like the story. Is it too descriptive? Not descriptive enough? Too slow-paced or fast? Do you agree with Booker's character so far? My handy-dandy tracker tells me that people are reading, so I must be doing something right, but I want to know if there's stuff you think is awesome or not awesome.


	6. The False Shepherd Deceives the Lamb

**A/N:**Without further ado, here's Chapter 5.

_**Chapter Five: The False Shepherd Deceives the Lamb**_

"_Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." -Matthew 7:15_

I was pretty damn certain this broad was trying to kill me with books. She threw another one at me from above, then ran down the stairs to get a better angle as I struggled to get out of the wreckage of the broken ceiling.

"Hey!" I shouted as one hit me on the shoulder, throwing up a hand to defend myself, "Would you – stop it – WOULD YOU STOP. IT." Unlistening, she picked another one up and started towards me, presumedly to bash me across the face with it. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

She stopped with the book poised at the ready and glared down at me, like she'd never seen a man fall out of the ceiling before. Not like it was my damn fault the construction here was shitty. Her chin was stubborn enough that I wasn't certain any amount of rational explanation was going to help me out. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"My name is DeWitt." I said as I stood up, hoping that wouldn't encourage her to hit me again. "I'm a friend. I've come to get you out of here." even though I loomed over her when I stood, she didn't back down or even looked scared; but she didn't attack me either, so maybe we were getting somewhere. I reached out to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and she took a step back, then scowled and swung with the book.

"_Get away." _she retorted, even as I caught her wrist easily in one hand and stopped her from braining me. She tried to swing a few more times, then realized it was useless and let her hands fall. When she took another look at me she went quiet, her eyes met mine and something in her gaze broke, and she reached a hand up to my face almost desperately, stopping just short of touching me. The pinky on her right hand was shorter than the rest of her fingers, and covered with a silver thimble.

"Are you real?" she breathed.

_Jesus. _Not only had they kept her locked up in here, she'd never actually met another person? No wonder she wanted to rearrange my face. If I was the first person I'd ever met in my life, I'd be pissed too. How could you raise someone like that? How could you call yourself a Prophet, and then lock a girl up in a tower and leave her to play with some toys, without any human interaction? That was... that was sick. What did I even say to that?

"I'm real enough," I replied. She seemed to accept that.

That was all the time for conversation we had. Something started whistling, and Elizabeth snatched her hand back, glanced to the left at the machine the whistling was coming from, and whispered, "He's coming," with notes of real terror in her voice.

She put both hands on my chest and pushed me backwards, looking frantically from side to side. "Y-you've gotta go." she said hurriedly.

"Why?" I said, confused by her sudden, almost violent changes in demeanor, but she didn't stop shoving, just turned a hard glare on me.

"You don't want to be here when he ge-" Elizabeth went instantaneously silent and and looked up, as if she could see whatever it was through the ceiling. The cavernous hole in the ceiling I'd made looked a lot more forboding from this side.

"Just a minute, I'm getting dressed!" she yelled, again to my confusion, as if she was talking to a person.

"We gotta get you outta here." I said.

"There's no way out, trust me, I've looked." she looked up again. "Stop it, you're- you're too impatient, that's enough."

Oh man, I was gonna knock her socks off with this one. "What about this?" I said, holding out the key that had been in the box the Luteces gave me.

"What about it." she said, not paying any attention.

"This is the way out, isn't it?"

She sighed dramatically, as if I was the one being a child, then finally looked at me. "What are yo- give it to me!" I let her wrench it from my hand and stood patiently as she looked it over, twirling in her fingers like a precious piece of jewelry. I guess if it was her ticket out of here, it was pretty precious. She was still transfixed by it when something I couldn't see let out a bloodcurling cry. It was mechanical, but under the whir of metal, it sounded almost like... a bird?

Elizabeth turned without a word and dashed over to a large metal door on the side of library that looked as if it hadn't been opened in a while. She fiddled with the key for a moment, then inserted into the disproportionately tiny lock set into the door and stepped back as it started to shake. Gears whirred and turned, and then with a click, the door popped out. Her squeal of glee echoed across the room.

"It's a way out!" she said, peeking through the crack. Hadn't I just said that? I'd just said that. Why don't dames ever listen to a man? They talk right over us, then ask us why we never have anything useful to say.

She didn't even wait for me to follow her, but once the sirens started blaring and the crying of the whatever-it-was turned into screeching, I didn't blame her. I took the stairs behind the door two at a time, almost knocking myself out on the wall when the whole staircase lurched like the place was falling apart. It didn't stop me for long though; whatever was making that noise was something I didn't want to meet.

"It's his job to keep me locked in here," Elizabeth called as we ran, her shorter legs somehow still keeping her ahead of me through the hatchways and down staircases.

"We'll see about that!" I yelled back, trying to sound more confident than the shaking walls around me let me actually be. One of the staircases finally exited back into a part of the building that I knew, which was better except now we had to dodge lumber falling from the ceiling. One would have landed right on Elizabeth if she hadn't jolted to a stop right before it hit the ground.

"Who are you? Why did you come here?" really? She wanted to have this talk now? I could think of a hundred different times and places that would be more appropriate; it wasn't hard to get more appropriate than 'not in a collapsing building with a screeching monster tearing creation down around our ears'. In light of this, I chose not to answer, and she didn't seem upset; just yelled at me to keep going and tore around a corner. The shakes were getting worse the farther we got; one rattled so bad it threw me to the floor and knocked all the breath out of me.

As I struggled to my feet, trying to catch my breath, three jagged tears appeared in the metal wall in front of me, and the screeching became much louder. Whatever had made them was huge, bigger than anything I'd ever seen, and how it was managing to tear holes in the walls dozens of feet above solid ground, I didn't want to think about I yelled for Elizabeth, but she was too far away; instead of figuring out what the claws that made those belonged to, I scrambled to my feet and took off again.

"Call the elevator!" I screamed as loud as I could.

"What?" came the distant response. Great, she probably didn't know what an elevator was. This girl was useless.

"PRESS THE BUTTON."

That one was simple enough for her. When I reached the elevator, she was slamming her fist on the button, then back off as we waited impatiently for the elevator to appear. The hatch to the music room was still open from when I'd been watching her; she looked at it, then pressed her face to the glass, looking shell-shocked.

"What is this..." she murmured, hands splayed against the window. "They were _watching _me? All this time... _why? _Why did they put me in here? What am I? What _am I?_" here she looked at me, voice cracking, but I didn't have any answers for her. I'd been wondering the same thing, but it wasn't like I could stroll up to Comstock and ask. She must've seen the answer on my face, because she turned back to the elevator, her small shoulders slumping.

"You're the girl who's getting' outta this tower." I said finally, because that's all the support I could offer. She didn't acknowledge the answer, just stared at the elevator door intently.

Which exploded outwards when the giant set of claws slammed through it. A head bigger than the frame pushed up to look it. It was metallic, bird-shaped, and inset with a giant, glowing eye that locked in on me, then started pushing its way through the wall. It reached a claw up to grab me – then screeched as the elevator slammed down right on the back of its head. It writhed for a minute, as if in pain, and then was gone, leaving a hole where the machinery had been. Luckily, there was a set of stairs across the gap, one we could reach from where we were standing.

Elizabeth followed me across the empty elevator shaft, then raced in front. "We've got to get out of here! He's tearing the building apart!"

"Careful, Elizabeth!" I yelled back.

"How do you know my name?" again with the questions during impending death. I didn't have the time or the luxury to roll my eyes.

"Not now!" I snapped, dodging more falling debris as I ascended the stairs, holding my pistol at the ready. I didn't think it was going to do a lick of damage against that giant bird thing, but it made me feel a little better. I guessed I just had to hope we'd find a place it couldn't follow us.

When I reached the top, Elizabeth was struggling with another metal door. "Out of the way, let me try." she consented wordlessly, and I heaved it open and held it so she could slip through.

"Which way?" she yelled as I struggled to push it open and get through myself.

"UP." it wasn't much of an option; on the other side, the the walkway ended abruptly to the left in open air. The open space to the left of me sent the same chill of terror through my veins as last time, but I couldn't freeze up if I wanted to not die. Luckily the metal underfoot was rough and there wasn't anything to trip on. Out in the open air, I caught glimpses of the giant bird wheeling through the sky, its glowing red eye glinting off the metal. Elizabeth and I were both wheezing when I caught up to her, and with a sinking feeling I realized we were at the last stop. The path ended at the top of the structure. There wasn't anywhere else to go. Before I could grab her and think of something to do, the floor under me lurched again, lurched the other way, and then disappeared entirely and we were falling through free space. Screaming, Elizabeth reached out to me and I struggled to grab her hand; I caught her, flipped around, and had just enough time to snatch up the skyhook and scramble desperately for a skyline. Miraculously, the magnets yanked us to the line and then we were being dragged through the air at murderous speeds, my arm threatening to pop off as bits of debris flew through space around us.

When the skyline looped around, we had a perfect view of Monument Island collapsing down on itself. The Angel cracked in half down one shoulder, and then as if in slow motion, the head slid off to one side and floated down, trailing sparks from the torn electrical wiring. Below me, Elizabeth was alternately screaming and crying, but her grip on my hand was solid. We flew past the head, past the wreckage, then before I could even process, the skyline was gone, ripped apart, and Elizabeth was torn away from me, flailing.

I fell, fell...

Then, _water, and I was drowning, choking-_

_-Crash, a flash of light-_

_Screech – angry – reaching, reaching -_

_Gurgle, cracked eye, and gone-_

_Black._

–

_Someone was pounding on my door. I lifted my head, but I was too drunk to answer._

_...no, that wasn't right. I hadn't been drunk in years. Why was the room spinning?_

_"Mr. DeWitt... MR. DEWITT." The pounding continued. I crawled to my knees. A woman in a skirt and blouse was standing in front of me._

_"Release the girl, and wipe away the debt." she muttered, even as someone yelled it through the door. She was looking at the ground tiredly, sadly. The room around me wasn't my room from Colorado. It was... New York?_

_Something here was wrong._

_As I thought it, the room around me changed. The beer bottles disappeared; a set of armchairs became visible in the middle of the room, crowded around a fireplace. A table and chair, with a jacket tossed carelessly over it, stood behind me. The girl didn't move; she continued to stare at the floor._

_The pounding on the door, too, hadn't ceased._

_"OPEN THIS DOOR." the voice this time wasn't a man's; it was a woman's, cultured and precise, but still demanding. Who was she?_

_"What do you want with the girl?" I demanded. There was no answer. When I looked back, the young woman was looking at me, her gaze simultaneously pleading and resigned._

_I turned, marched to the door, and yanked it open._

_"There's no girl here." but all that I saw on the other side was bright, white light._

–

Something was trying to crush me. The pain and the clogged, murky feeling in my lungs swelled up, and I starting coughing violently. Clearly I was dying, because unless I was in hell, there was no way the afterlife included this much pain. I cracked my eyes open, wracking coughs still shaking my body, and caught a glimpse of a silhouette above me before I fell back down into pain.

"No, it's me. Elizabeth." the soft voice brought me back to the world of the living from wherever I had been driting. My chest felt like someone had been on it with a hammer, and my lungs were burning, but I could breathe somewhat normally now. When I opened my eyes fully, Elizabeth loomed over me, looking surprisingly distressed by my condition. I could feel sand – strange – against my hands, and the sun on my face was warm.

"Are you all right?" she asked, her hands gentle as she checked me over.

"Where am I?" I asked hoarsely. Hopefully she had a better answer than lying flat on my back in some sand. I would have looked myself, but I thought another minute staying horizontal would do me some good.

"Back in the land of the living," she replied, destroying any hope I'd had of a useful answer out of her. In fact, that answer was less useful and more obvious than the one I'd imagined. We would have to work on that.

"Here, let me." she said with a smile, grabbing my hand and pulling me up slowly to a seated position.

"I can do it myself, I'm fine." I said tiredly, but I didn't have the strength to resist. Now that I was more awake, I was uncomfortable with her hovering over me and trying to mother me. She didn't listen, and kept tugging on my hand, smiling in what I guess was supposed to be a kind way. It was irritating.

"You almost drowned, you know. You need to-" finally, I yanked my hand out of her grasp, almost knocking myself over in the process, and she fell silent.

"I _said, _I'm fine." I repeated shortly, trying to push myself all the way up and failing. "Just... just give me a minute." She pursed her lips, but finally looked away and didn't make any moves to help me. Good. She didn't need to think I was here to be her friend. That would only spell trouble.

We sat for a moment in silence, then something caught her attention and she looked away, her face lighting up like a streetlamp. "Do you hear that? ...it's music!" she said excitedly, as if this was a strange and new up in isolation with a giant bird for a friend did weird things to you, looked like. But sure enough, I could hear a lively tune floating through the air. It didn't sound too far away. Maybe if she ran off to hear to the music, it would give me time to get my feet under me. I waved at her and muttered something, and that was enough for her to jump to her feet, nearly vibrating with excitement.

"O-okay, I... I won't be long. I won't be long, Mr. DeWitt." in a flash, she was gone from sight, and I was left alone. Mr. DeWitt? Where had she picked that up?

Still unable to sit up, I collapsed back onto the sand with a grunt, and my vision swam again. I laid there for God knows how long, waiting for the spots in my eyes to clear, trying to piece together what had happened. Little by little, my vision got clearer; first I could see my arm, stretched out on the sand in front of me, and then the blurry shape of a couple a few dozen feet away. The skyline had broke, and then we were falling, and then... water? How could I have fallen into water? The air smelled damp and sharp, like salt. Could there be a beach in Columbia?

Finally, I was able to struggle upright, and then slowly, staggeringly, get to my feet. To my left, waves lapped the sandy shore just like a real ocean (or the closest I'd seen, which was New York and so likely didn't count), and to my left, men and women in bathing suits lounged on towels or stood and talked in the sunshine. It didn't look like the water extended very far, but nobody looked interested in swimming anyway. One side of the beach ended at a wall, probably to keep the sand in, and the rest was closed in by a building. I didn't see Elizabeth anywhere on the beach though, which now that I was a little more clear-headed, was worrying. I needed to track her down, so we could get the hell out of here. It was pretty damn likely Comstock was already looking for us, since we'd managed to destroy a giant monument bigger than the Statue of Liberty right in the middle of the city. Maybe someone had seen her go by.

"Hey, have you seen a young girl, white shirt, blue skirt, dark hair?" I asked a woman sitting on a beach towel not far from where I'd woken up. She tilted her head and fluttered her eyelashes, and goddammit, why had I not asked a man?

"No, but... I'm without an escort if you're looking to pass the time." she cooed, turning her chin into her shoulder coyly. Jesus. What was with the women in this town? I didn't even grace her with an answer, just stalked off to find someone else.

No one else on the beach had seen her pass by, or probably more likely weren't willing to tell me if they had. I left the sunbathers in their stupid-looking suits to look further. There was a short covered way that led to another, more populated beach, and off to the side, a boiler room that looked like it had something to do with how the fake ocean worked. One of the workers, absent from the room, had left his lunch pail sitting on the table near the door with the lid cracked; I opened it up and grabbed the sandwich on the top so I could stop the rumbling in my stomach while I searched. Tough luck, pal; if he ever got chased by a giant mechanical bird, fell off a flying island, and almost drowned, I'd repay the favor. Until then, I was going to savor every bit of his canned ham sandwich. I took note of a poster on the wall, advertising the 'First Lady's Airship' – maybe that was our ticket out of here, if we could find a way to it.

I didn't see Elizabeth anywhere on the other beach either, and I was beginning to get frustrated. The exit was closed, so I didn't think she'd left; the only other place to check was the pier that extended into the water, which if she wasn't there, was going to be a problem. I passed a couple saying something about separate but equal something-or-other and a couple of kids building sand castles and started up the pier, where I could see a few couples dancing. To my relief, Elizabeth was there, skipping in the middle to the laughter and applause of some others, looking like she was having the time of her life.

"Hey, miss..." I said, standing awkwardly to the side as she spun in a circle, her eyes passing over me as if I wasn't there. "Miss. Elizabeth." I tried again louder. She noticed me this time, and stopped with a wide smile, swaying a bit.

"Hello!" she replied, giggling. "Oh, this is _wonderful, _come dance with me, Mr. Dewitt-"

She held her hands out in invitation, but I shook my head firmly and motioned to the beach.

"I don't _dance, _come on, let's go." I said shortly, ignoring the crestfallen look on her face.

"But _why? _What could be better than this?" she stepped back and twirled again, and I really wasn't seeing the allure of tripping over my own feet in front of a bunch of strangers, but I chalked it up to her being sheltered and tried to think of another way to get her to come with me that wouldn't get me on her bad side. Attract more flies with honey than vinegar and all that. Over her shoulder, like a sign, I saw the First Lady's airship drifting through the sky, the Lady Comstock's Face large enough to be seen below on the side. It gave me an idea.

"Well, how about... Paris?" that got her attention immediately, and she stepped back in front of me and gave me a beseeching look.

"What, Paris? I-I don't understand, how could we get there?" she asked curiously, but the hook was in. It was pretty clear from all the stuff in her room that this girl was obsessed with Paris. And I'd been told to tell the girl whatever she wanted to hear, as long as she came along.

"It's where that airships going," I said, pointing to it behind her, "But if you wanna stay and dance, you can-" she shook her head quickly.

"No, no, come on, let's go! Let's go right now!" she grabbed me by the hand and tugged me off the pier as fast as she could. I followed in amusement, amazed at how excited she was by the idea of going to Paris. I hadn't felt like that since I was a kid.

No, that was a lie. Not since – but that wasn't important. Getting Elizabeth to New York, like that dame had asked, was.

We crossed the beach to where the exit was. The photo shoot it had been closed for before was gone, so we strolled right up the steps and through the turnstile into what looked like a gift shop. Elizabeth stopped without warning, and I almost ran into her.

"Father Comstock..." she said, staring at a poster display in the middle of the entryway. His face took up the entire poster; behind them, there was another dedicated to Lady Comstock, her dark hair piled up elegantly on top of her head. "I've read about him. They say he can see the future."

I rolled my eyes. What a load of shit. "Give a man a little power, and he falls in all kinds of love with himself." I snorted. She didn't glance at me.

"I don't like his look." she said softly, her eyes still on the poster. There was a strange tension in her body, as if something about Comstock really bothered her.  
Nearby, something thudded, and I looked up to see what must have been the patron of the shop standing nearby, stocking shelves. "Do you dislike the look of the Prophet?" he sneered at the two of us. "Or his _gaze?_" the tone of his voice really rankled me. I took a step forward, ready to resolve our differences and maybe rearrange his face, when a slight tug on my sleeve stopped me. I looked back; Elizabeth was glancing at me pleadingly, every inch of her body in discomfort.

"...can we leave now?" she asked quietly. I looked back at the shopkeeper, who wrinkled his nose, then stalked off, Elizabeth right on my heels. We left the store without even looking around, though Elizabeth shot a few curious glances at some of the toys on sale. And I may have nipped a hand into the cash register while no one was looking. That son of a bitch deserved what was coming to him already, this was just a nudge in that direction.

Up a few flights of stairs, the building opened onto a boardwalk, filled with vendors and stalls. I was looking around for anything useful to take with me when Elizabeth darted off again.

"Mr. DeWitt! Over here!" she called from whatever she was looking at. I really wished she'd drop the 'Mr.' stuff. She was standing in front of two ginger-haired – and oh Christ, not this again.

"Which will it be, Miss? The cage?" female Lutece suggested, holding out a pillow with something on it for her to inspect.

"Or the bird?" male Lutece added. His sister shot him a scathing look.

"Or perhaps the _cage? _Nothing beats the cage." she said snidely, looking at her brother, and then me. I felt that there was something extra in her words, some sort of meaning that I wasn't smart enough to catch. But there was always something else going on with these two; some sort of game that I felt like I was just a pawn in, that they never gave me a clue to the real meaning of.

"Look at these, they're amazing! Which one do you like more, this one? Or, or this?" Elizabeth asked, turning and holding up two jewelry boxes with trinkets in them. They were both ovals made of some dark stone, ringed with elaborate gold braiding. One had the outline of a birdcage on it, the other a white bird. I stared at them for a moment, while Elizabeth waited impatiently, and something knotted in my gut. Were these two serious? Was this some kind of sick joke?

The bird or the cage. Elizabeth's lonely tower, or her bird-creature captor? And I was supposed to pick one of these for her to _wear? _This kind of underhandedness made my blood run cold. Clearly Elizabeth didn't have any idea, but she didn't know these two goons; I did. And I wasn't doing this. Not for them, not to her.

"Those are both really cheap looking." I said roughly. Elizabeth's face twisted in confusion, and she turned the boxes back to her to examine the pendants again.

"Really? I thought they were pretty..." she said, sounding crestfallen. I felt like a real card right now.

"Well, they look like shams to me. Give them back, we'll find you something better. Maybe in Paris. Isn't that where women always wish they could shop?" I said. Her shoulders fell, but she laid the two pendants back down on the pillows and turned away.

"Interesting." female Lutece said.

"Let us know if you change your mind."

"But it seems you already have."

"Indeed." the two strolled off as if completely unaffected by my refusal, and Elizabeth stormed away, clearly upset with me. She walked all the way up to the small wall that overlooked Columbia and stood there, arms crossed as she looked out over the city. Jesus. I didn't know what to do now. I was clearly in the doghouse.

I walked up behind her, reached out for her shoulder, then drew back, wondering what to say. She beat me to the punch.

"That was incredibly rude. You insulted their wares right to their face." she said clippedly without turning around. I sighed and edged up beside her.

"Look, I've run into those two a few times now. They're running some sort of game that you and I don't know anything about, and I didn't want you dragged into it." I said honestly. The rigid line of her back softened, and she turned to me with a look of surprise.

"Why, Mr. Dewitt, I didn't know you cared." she said with a slight upturned twist of the mouth. It was amazing how quickly her mood changed; she was like a child, in that whatever she was feeling, she felt it as deeply as possible. When she was angry, it radiated around her in every direction. But when she was in good humour, like it looked she was now, there was no way to tell she had ever been upset.

I didn't know what to say. I didn't care? I cared about getting her to New York. I did care? That definitely wasn't it. So I just said, "Don't call me that."

She didn't reply, but she was still smiling slightly as she looked back at the view. When someone behind me gasped, I glanced back to see a man staring out at where Monument Island floated, now visible in all it shattered glory. The clouds that had been covering up all the damage to Monument Island were dispersing, and now you could see the missing head and the cracks all over the Angel. Elizabeth had seen it too; it seemed to leech every semblance of good humor out of her as she watched the place she'd grown up crumble.

"Let's go." I said. She didn't argue, just followed me further down the boardwalk.

_**A/N:**_So just so everyone knows, I made a few changes to the prologuue to make it read a little better and more smoothly. It's not really anything important, if you don't feel like going back to read it. I'll probably do that with all the chapters from time to time. As always, pleeeeeaaase review! Let me know how you like the story, the dialogue, the portrayal of Booker and Elizabeth, etc. etc.

Sidenote: I completely missed the creepy gay guy that hits on you in Battleship Bay the first time around. I wasn't paying attention to him when he was talking, and then I was like 'Wait... what?'

See you next time!


	7. Soldier of the Prophet

_**A/N: **_I got three reviews last chapter! They love me, they really love me! Seriously, though, thanks to my readers. You make me keep on writing.

_**Chapter Six: Soldier of the Prophet**_

News about the ruined monument spread like wildfire. Elizabeth and I hurried through the boardwalk to find entrance to the First Lady's airship before someone looked too close at us, but everyone was too busy staring at the smoking ruin to even spare us a glance. When we came up the stairs to the entrance, there was a check point set up, and the coppers went patting down everyone that was trying to enter the area. That wasn't gonna bode well for either of us. Luckily, they hadn't noticed our entrance, so I slipped off to the side to see if there was a back entrance, Elizabeth right behind.

It looked like there was another way in, a servant's entrance or something off to the side, but when I jiggled the handle, it didn't budge.

"Dammit. It's locked." I said in frustration. Elizabeth appeared beside me and knelt to examine the lock, then pulled something out of her pocket and inserted in into the the hole.

"What are you doing?" I hissed, looking back to see if anyone was watching. The police were still focused on their searches, so we were in the clear for now, but if anyone saw us over here, we were done for.

"You're a roguish type. What does it look like?" she replied sarcastically, still fiddling with the lock. After a moment, something clicked, and she put her lockpicks back into her pocket and looked at me smugly. She pushed the door open and slipped through; I followed and shut it carefully behind us, making sure no one would have a clue we'd been through here.

"Where did you learn to pick locks?" I asked in astonishment. The door led into a deserted office area, with just a few desks and some old equipment laying around, covered in dust.

"Trapped in a tower with nothing but books and spare time? You would be surprised what I know how to do." she shot back. I raised my eyebrows at her, but she just smiled and ran ahead. Maybe she wasn't as useless as I first thought. She was definitely not what I'd expected when I got the job.

It looked like this route was for the workers, probably to keep them out of site of all the 'high society' ladies and gentlemen visiting for the ship. I knew from experience that they complained about being around anyone who stunk of hard work. We passed a man scrubbing the floor, and another mopping, both colored men that didn't even look at us as he walked past. When I noticed a john in the hall in front of us, labeled 'Colored and Irish Washroom', I stopped and motioned to Elizabeth that I needed a moment. It was against the law for whites to use a colored bathroom, but I wasn't waiting until we found another john. Elizabeth nodded and leaned against the wall to wait.

When I pushed the bathroom door open, a cloud of stink hit me straight in the face, enough to make me cough. I clear my throat and walked in anyway, because I really needed to piss, and it wasn't the first time I'd pissed in a dirty bathroom. The floor was missing tiles and the sinks were covered in grime; one of them had a leaky pipe that was draining into a rusted bucket. The urinals were cracked and old, and one of the toilets was completely missing. Something about it seemed strange; I tried to think what it was as I pissed, and then finally the lightbulb came on. This was the first place in Columbia I'd seen that was dirty. Everyplace else had been clean, sophisticated, and orderly; this bathroom was anything but.

"Miss, if anyone sees me talkin' to you- oh sir, it's not what it looks like, I wasn't giving her no trouble!" when I pushed the washroom door open, I looked over to see Elizabeth standing near the negro that was mopping; he was staring at me, his eyes wide, like he was afraid. The mop was stationary in his hand. Elizabeth, who was probably in the middle of asking him his life story, just looked confused.

"Is something wrong?" she asked him, but he just ducked his head and went back to mopping without answering her.

"On my honor, sir, I didn't intend nothing!" he said to me instead, avoiding both of our gazes with an intensity I'd never seen. His hands were trembling.

"It's fine." I replied, grabbing Elizabeth by the arm to drag her away, "I'm sure she was the one bothering you. Let's go, Elizabeth, let him go back to work." Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, but I gave her a hard look and she relented, following me away from the Negro sullenly. When we were out of sight and earshot, she stopped; I sighed, but turned around to face her bombardment of questions.

"I don't understand," she started, "what's so wrong with me speaking to him? Why was he afraid?"

"You can't just talk to coloreds, Elizabeth-" I started, but she cut me off immediately, because the word 'can't' was nowhere in her vocabulary, clearly.

"Why not?"

"Because – because you can't. They don't talk to us, we don't talk to them. Separate but equal, you heard of that?" she went silent at that and tilted her head to the side, as if in thought.

"...I've heard of it. But. That didn't seem very equal to me. He was afraid of you. Afraid you thought he was bothering me. And those washrooms were definitely not equal to the ones upstairs. The white bathrooms were spotless. Those looked like they belonged in the slums."

I rolled my eyes, because of course she wouldn't get it. Living in that ivory tower had given her all sorts of weird ideas. She'd get over all this after more time in the real world. I hoped she would, anyway.

"They probably just don't take care of them. Now, come on, let's go."

"No." when I turned back at the sound of her voice, she hadn't taken a step. Her posture was forward, almost aggressive, and she looked upset. Great. "Since separate but equal was passed in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, colored people have been excluded from a majority of the good schools in America. They're given used books and old buildings to use as schools. Since most coloreds are still illiterate, they're not allowed to vote, but in Oklahoma, whites are excluded from the literacy test if their family could vote in 1866. Most negros work in low-end service or manual labor jobs, and their children have to help work to support the family, meaning they never any education and when they grow up, they go into manual labor and service too. No Negro has ever held a position of position in the government or a big business. They're stepped on and abused by us whites, Mr. DeWitt, you know it."

Where the hell had this come from? There was a challenge in her eyes when she finished her tirade, as if she was ready to rebut any comment I made on the subject. I wondered if all that stuff she'd quoted at me was true. I didn't read much; I got by in life alright without picking up any books, and I really didn't know the first thing about Ferguson vs. Penny or whatever she'd said, I just knew how things were. But I didn't think she'd accept that answer, and this wasn't a fight I was willing to start. My only job was to get her back to New York, not to discuss people's rights.

"Well, there's not anything we can do about it now, sister." I said, after a moment. "In case you hadn't noticed, you and me are fugitives, and we've got the whole town of Columbia trying to catch us. So we should probably worry about getting on that airship first. Then you can change the world."

She looked like she was going to argue, but after a pause she nodded, and I took that as a signal that we could keep going. But even as we exited back into the white part of the building, I kept thinking about what she said. It sounded pretty smart. Maybe she was right.

–

We wandered through the building slowly to avoid attention. Elizabeth didn't have much trouble blending in; she watched some puppet show named 'Duke and Dimwit' with glee, and nearly fainted when someone handed her a cone of some type of fluffy candy. She even tried to give some to me, and scowled when I flat-out refused. I didn't think it was possible for people to get more high-society, but the patrons here were wearing finer clothes than I'd ever seen; silk dresses with large, rose-covered bonnets, and men in fine cut suits with smart bowler hats, smoking fat cigars. They talked politics, the women giggled about gossip, and the men complained about the micks that worked the factories. Colored servants walked around in bright costumes, offering drinks and food, and on one end, a man was announcing the chance to take a picture with 'the father of our country' to a group of gasping children. We passed advertisements on the wall for vigors, fine spirits, and the occasional picture of the Lady Comstock, promising chances to see the dresses she wore and the causes she supported. It looked almost like she had as much pull here as her husband; the dames fawned over her dark hair and blue eyes like she was a famous actress.

We finally found the ticket kiosk a floor up, across a grand room that held a few groups of passengers and a man playing a violin. When I walked up to the kiosk, the ticket seller was deep in conversation on the telephone, turned away from the window so I couldn't hear what he was saying. He glanced at me once, but didn't turn to help me; I waited for a minute impatiently, but when he didn't even ask me to give him a minute, I rung the bell a couple times to get his attention.

"Hey, pal, in kind of a rush here." I growled, but he still didn't look up. I was getting a weird feeling about this; the room behind me had gone strangely quiet.

"Yeah, uh-huh, we're ready. Send in the bird."

I didn't like the sound of that at all. I slammed my hand on the counter one last time to get his attention, my other hand creeping to the pistol hidden in my waistband, and he finally turned and hung up the telephone.

"Can I get some help here?" I said icily.

"Certainly, sir. Sorry about the -" before I had a chance to move, he yanked a knife from his belt and plunged it right into my hand, grinning. I yelled in pain and made the mistake of trying to yank my hand back; that just made the wound deeper, and me scream louder. Behind me, I could hear Elizabeth yelling something, and another man grunting. A few thuds, and then a loud masculine 'oomph' of pain; I yanked the knife out of my pain, gritting my teeth, then awkwardly pulled my pistol out and took aim at the man behind me. He went down like a sack of bricks, giving me time to relocate behind a pillar for protection from the shots flying towards me. Elizabeth was nowhere in sight, so I hoped she'd hidden somewhere; I couldn't protect her with an injured hand in the middle of a firefight. I'd be lucky if I didn't die myself.

Waiting for a lull in the gunfire, I leaned out and took another one out. When I darted back to my hiding place, I was met with the downward thrust of a knife; I threw myself out of the way, the strike barely missing, and then hit him across the jaw, dazing him enough that I could get a shot in.

The pillar was quickly becoming a bad hiding spot. I took a deep breath, then sprinted back to the entryway to the kiosk and lined up flush against the wall, near the window so I could use it to shoot from. When I could hear footsteps, I summoned up a vigor and lobbed a fireball at one, then took out another with a headshot. The last took a look at the bodies and turned tail; I got him once in the leg, then the back, and he lay still. After the last echoes of the shot died out, the whole room was as silent as death.

_Shit. _Where was Elizabeth?

It hurt like a bitch to hold the pistol, but I couldn't risk putting it away. I felt good enough to use my vigors, but I still wasn't sure how much I could use them before I exhausted myself. Summary: I was in bad shape. Grimacing in pain, I left the ticket booth and crossed the room to the exit, stopping only momentarily to strip a few bodies of ammo. I couldn't believe that fool girl had run off by herself. She was going to get herself killed pulling stunts like that.

The next room was empty, and the room after that. Great. It wasn't until I found the dock with the ferry to the First Lady's Airship that I finally spotted her. She was standing next to the ship, and didn't turn when I stormed in. Thankfully, I didn't see any blood, and she didn't look hurt, just spooked. For a real life Rapunzel, she did a good job of taking care of herself.

"Hey, Elizabeth! Just – stay where you are -" she whirled around, glanced at the pistol in my hand, and her eyes got wide. One hand flew to her mouth.

"Stay away from me!" she shouted, backing into the ship. I swore again and shoved the pistol into my waistband before I moved forward. I could hear her messing with something as I jumped on the deck and moved towards the control room. She was struggling to push the control lever to the left; when I entered, her breath hitched, and she stumbled backwards, but there was nowhere for her to go. I didn't say anything, just yanked the lever to 'go' awkwardly with my left hand and moved back, giving her some space. She sounded like she was about to go into hysterics.

"...you... you killed those people... I can't believe you did that. They're all dead. _You killed those people." _her voice slipped further into panic before she spun around to face me. Surprisingly, even though her breath was still shaky like it was hard for her to breath, she hadn't started crying. I wouldn't have blamed her if she had; I'd been hoping to avoid all this mess, honestly, but it was kind of hard when people started shooting at you.

"Elizabeth, I..." I trailed off, but the expression on her face didn't change. She took a step forward and shoved me backwards, almost knocking me on my ass. Her eyes were cold.

"You're a _monster." _she hissed; her breath hitched again, and she started gulping air, like she was about to have a panic attack. I got my feet back under me but still didn't move. I didn't think she'd take kindly to me getting any closer

"What did you think was going to happen?" I asked her, keeping my voice low like I was talking to a spooked animal. "Do you understand the expense that people went through to keep you locked up in that tower? ...you think people like that are just gonna let you walk away? You are an _investment, _and you will not be safe until you are far away from here."

She had turned to look out the window as I talked, her knuckles white on the rail under the window. Now, the tension disappeared from her shoulders and she turned to face me again.

"...what do they want from me?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. But that's the last time anyone gets the drop on me."

Unthinking, I reached for the railing with my hand, and my face went wide with pain; I leaned up against the wall heavily and took a few deep breaths, trying to control the pain. The knife had sunk clean through my damn hand and left another wound on the other side. It was a wonder I could even still use it. Blood had gotten everywhere in the firefight, leaving trails along my wrists and spread across my shirt (though lucky they were almost impossible to see on the black), and it was still leaking sluggishly from the back of my hand. I didn't know how I was going to manage bandaging it up.

"Here, let me see your hand." Elizabeth said suddenly. Surprised, I held it out and watched silently as she ripped a strip from her skirt and wound it around the wound gently. Her face was still closed off, but it felt almost like forgiveness.

"What happened back there, it's not the last of it, is it?" she questioned as she knotted the makeshift bandage. She looked at the blood on my shirt, then pulled the sides of my vest together and buttoned it, covering the stain.

"I don't know." I said honestly. She didn't reply.

We went the rest of the journey in silence. Elizabeth seemed lost in thought, looking out the window for a long stretch of time without any movement. When we finally docked, I thought I was going to have to shake her out of it, but after a moment she shook her head and turned to me with a small, automatic smile.

"Where are we?" she asked as we climbed off the boat. A giant sign over the building answered the question before I could. It read, 'Soldier's Field' and was decorated military-style, in all red, white, and blue. A turnstile led into the area; seeing no other way to continue, we pushed out way through to the other side.

I started when I saw movement on the lower level, but relaxed when I realized it was some sort of moving model, with automated little machine boys moving around in a circle. There were eagles everywhere, and the one in the middle held a giant carbine. Some sort of military march played in the background, but there was no one around but us to hear it; somewhere I could hear what sounded like children shrieking, but this room was empty. To the left, I saw a locked door, and to the right, there was a scale model of the area we were in, floating above a table.

"I know this place. It was built in 1902 by the Prophet." Elizabeth said as we examined the model. It looked almost like a fair, with different attractions on several connected islands, and a circle of shops in the middle.

"What interest does Comstock have in this junk?" I asked skeptically, examining the model to figure out how to get to the aeroship from where we were.

"It was built to enforce the importance of national service to children." she said quietly. When I looked around again, I could see the slight childishness of the props and the music, added to the young voices I could still here in the distance. Everything was loud and over the top; I guess when I was a kid, it probably would've been something I got excited about.

"You mean the military?" I asked. She nodded.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." she answered almost automatically, as if she were quoting someone. That sounded like something a dame would say. Actually, it sounded like something my ma would've said. It had been her style of mothering; considering my actions in the past, I'd say it hadn't stuck well.

"Did you write that?" I said wryly, trying to lighten the mood a little. She looked as if I had struck her. Her eyes went wide in shock, her eyebrows almost up to her hairline, but unlike usual, she didn't get angry. She just looked miserable again.

"...no." What did I say? How did I always pick the wrong thing to say? It was like everything I said she took the wrong way. Women always did that, and I didn't understand it. Well, if she wasn't gonna say anything, I wasn't apologizing. I'd already done enough of that today.

We backtracked to the main room and I turned to the back to examine the door next to the ticket kiosk. It was big, with a metal rolling door closed tightly and some sort of electric generator next to it. The moment I turned to look for a switch, something crashed, and the lights flickered, then half went out, leaving us in semi-darkness. When I looked back, the generator had also fizzled out. Shit. I was gonna have to open the gate by hand. It took a couple tries, and probably ripped the scabs on my hand open again, but I got it up far enough for Elizabeth and I to squeeze through.

The decorating continued in the same nauseating style, with occasional signs for the airship, some vigor called Shock Jockey, and ads promoting 'separate but equal' treatment across Columbia. 'Let's show America how it's done!' read one. Elizabeth spit on it.

We exited the welcome building and out onto another boardwalk, populated by screaming children. I could feel the headache already. I stashed the shotgun I'd had behind a trash can, seeing as it didn't quite fit under my vest like a pistol, and Elizabeth and I explored the boardwalk inconspicuously. It was starting to get dark out, and tiredness was catching up to me fast, but there wouldn't be a chance to rest until we were aboard that airship; on the ground, we weren't safe enough to stop paying attention even for a moment.

As she walked, she asked me about anything and everything that came to mind; why I'd been sent to free her(I didn't know), what I'd done before I got here (after a moment, I told her hesitantly about Pinkertons, then about moving to Colorado to work on the railways), even about whether I 'had a woman in my life' (I told her haltingly about the death in childbirth, and she got the message and clammed up). We passed an ice cream shop, a library, and another 'Duke and Dimwit' play that seemed to involve wearing giant heads and dancing around while someone narrated. We stayed for a moment while Elizabeth enjoyed the show and I watched the backup Duke behind the stage, paper mache' head on the ground and asleep in a pile of empty booze bottles and cigarette butts. A toy store across the way had a giant toy Songbird that Elizabeth almost walked into before she noticed; when she came face to face with it, she gasped and jumped backwards like it was a bogey man. The store keeper laughed; I just patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and pulled her, white-faced, from the shop.

When we finally found the gondola controls, it was unmanned and not running; to no surprise of mine, when I pulled the lever, the generator behind it popped and fizzled out. Because nothing in this goddamn city could ever be easy.

"Look, Mr. DeWitt." Elizabeth pointed to a sign standing next to the the generator that I hadn't bothered to read. "It looks like this runs solely off that Shock Jockey vigor. We'll probably have to go find it to get the gondola running." The sign advertised that it could be found in the 'Hall of Heroes', which I vaguely remembered seeing somewhere on the model in the entrance. I hated backtracking, but it looked like our only choice. Two steps forward, one step back.

The whole area had gradually gotten quieter as we'd moved through Soldier's Field; now, it looked like all the people had finally left, with dark setting in fully. Something else felt wrong though; it tickled the hairs on the back of my neck, like someone was watching, even though the only other person around was a worker in a striped shirt, smoking a cigarette on one of the benches. I flinched when from somewhere above us, a loudspeaker kicked on, and a familiar feminine voice announced, "Gentlemen, the false Shepherd is loose in our fair city. Will you allow the lives of your sons and daughters to fall prey to his machinations? Or will you act, act for you womenfolk? Act for your prophet?" the loudspeaker fizzled out, and the square was as still as a graveyard.

"Where did all the people go?" Elizabeth asked, looking around nervously. When I looked ahead to where we needed to go, I could see the faded red of police blocks set up on either side of the stairway; that meant that they'd found us, and I was going to have to take them out before we could get to the Hall of Heroes.

"Elizabeth," I said quietly, grabbing her shoulder. She turned to give me a questioning look. "See those police blocks up there? Hide. I'll yell for you when it's safe." Her mouth went tight, but she just nodded and slipped away. I knew she was still upset with me, but it looked like she understood now that it had to be done. Still, I tracked her hiding place with my eyes, in case I needed to get her out fast.

Holed up behind one of the advertisements, I got the drop on the police block guards before they could even send out an alert. Not one had a chance to let out a yell before all of them were face down on the ground. Not bad shooting, for a pistol. Looks like some things never changed, no matter how much you wanted 'em to. I called Elizabeth out, and she emerged from behind a pillar cautiously, looking around for any stray coppers. I searched for a route to get through to the other side without getting near the bodies, but there was no way to. We were going to have to pass by them.

"Look, we're gonna have to walk through there. Just... close your eyes or, or don't look or something. Okay?" I said awkwardly. She glanced at me and nodded stiffly, then focused her gaze on the entryway at the end of the boardwalk, walking straight and upright, like she was trying to pretend it didn't bother her. I followed right behind her, keeping one eye on her back and the other on our surroundings for any threats.

It didn't work; we got halfway through the battlezone before she gave in and glanced down; she froze like a deer, as if unable to take her gaze away from the mess of blood and bone on the ground, and then just as suddenly took off to the railing. I looked away to give her a little privacy, but the wet sounds of vomit were hard to miss. It was a minute before she returned, pale and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

"I'm fine." she said before I could ask. I didn't know if she was trying to convince me, or herself. This time, when we walked between the stiffs, she went to the first one, unprovoked, and hesitantly pulled his arms across his chest, like they do at funerals. She did the same to the next, and the next, and even at the last one, whose face was half gone, she worked without flinching, rolling him onto his back and straightening his clothes like he was a boy getting ready for Sunday school. I wordlessly picked up a carbine, dropped by one of the men, and then waited. The first time was hard, I knew. Everyone worked through it a different way.

_He came at me from the left, letting out a fierce war cry, and I didn't think; I swung my rifle up, took aim, and pulled the trigger, and half his naked chest, and the warpaint on it, was blasted away. He fell to the ground, gurgling, the ends of his jet black hair sticky with blood, and I stepped up to him and shot again. Then I lowered my weapon, and my knees buckled, and I sat there staring at the red staining the ground and the feathers tangled in his hair until Johnson picked me up and told me to stop being such a goddamn chicken, come on, we got Injuns to kill. _

When she came back, we continued on.

–

The Hall of Heroes was in another corner of Soldier's Field, behind a sign that deemed it 'closed until further notice'. That suited me just fine, meant nobody around to get in the way. It like it was set up on another island that we needed a gondola to get to, but it was going to take some work to get to it. Another police block was set up in the the square before the gondola; it looked from where we were standing like they were having some sort of meeting, so Elizabeth and I hid around the corner to listen and see if we could learn anything useful.

"-keep a watch out for the False Shepherd. There's a chance he's trying to make his way through here and if he is, we have to stop him."

"Sir, why isn't Slate here to help us?"

"Slate has bigger fish to fry. Besides, it's just one son of a bitch and a girl. That too much for you to handle, Matthews?"

"No, sir!"

Slate... it couldn't be. I'd known a man named Slate, once upon a time. It wasn't a common name, but still, the chances of running into him again, especially here, were unlikely. It was probably a coincidence. I jerked my head at Elizabeth, to tell her to hide, and quietly leaned around the corner, taking aim at the copper closest to me.

_Blam. _Down.

_Blam. _Another. That was enough time for them to stop whirling in confusion and start returning fire. I ducked back around the corner for a minute and reloaded, watching bullets slam into the stretch of wall open to the outside. Elizabeth was behind the other side of the entryway; she looked calm this time around, not jumping at the sounds of shouting or shots firing.

Another moment of waiting, then I darted out and kneeled behind a pillar next to the stairway. That gave me a better view of the ground below without making me more vulnerable. The coppers had been right out on open ground, but now that they knew I was here, they'd scattered behind loads of cargo and the police blocks, waiting for me to show my face.

One was not well hidden. I took aim and hit him in the shoulder; he cried out, and disappeared from sight. There was only one of me, and a lot of them, so it was easier for them to lay down covering fire and creep forward than it was for me to take them out; since I'd never exactly been a wanted fugitive being hunted by the police before(though I'd done pretty much everything else), this was a rough learning curve for me.

Leaning out to take a potshot, I almost lost my head, but another one of the cops went down. There were maybe five or six left. They were at the front of the open ground now, but it looked like they weren't sure about how to breach the staircase. I hadn't picked my spot because of that, but it was good; all that open ground made it hard for them to get any closer without being exposed long enough for me to shoot them down. It looked like I'd get out of this one with everything still attached.

"Booker, a crow!"

Shit, that was Elizabeth. I glanced back; she was already out of sight, smart girl, but when I looked back to scan the plaza, I saw what she was talking about. One of those robed men from the Order of the Raven, the ones that appeared and disappeared like magic tricks, was stalking along the side of a building not too far away, not looking at all scared of my peashooter. This pretty much pulled the rug out from under my feet, just as I thought I was done with this battle.

This was probably a good place to use some vigors to my advantage. Turning towards the big crate that most of the police had taken shelter behind, I felt inside for my murder of crows and coaxed it forward like a living thing. When I thrust my hand out, the swell of energy rolled down my arm and exploded in a squalling, whirling hurricane of ravens, who rocked out around the crate to find their prey. There were exclamations, cries of pain, and enough confusion that I could jump forward, race down the stairs, and circle to the left of the crate, giving me a clear shot of every one of the coppers as they tried to bat ravens away from their face and torso. With a distraction like that, they all went down easy, even the two hiding on the other side of the square, who couldn't get a clear shot on me while their brothers in blue had been blocking their view.

That just left me with the Crowman, who was... where? Where the hell was he? I looked around warily, searching for anything out of place, but I couldn't find a trace of him. Where could he have gone?

_Elizabeth. _I turned and raced back up the steps and towards the entrance to the building where she was hiding. There was an angry shriek, and the flutter of a black wing caught my eye in the shadows.

The Crowman had her backed up against a wall and was advancing slowly, as if he were enjoying it. She had picked up a candelabra somewhere; she took a swing and the sharp end where the candle was supposed to be ripped through part of his hood, but he didn't stop moving.

"Hey!" I yelled, hoping to get the attention of the Crowman before he got any closer to Elizabeth. It worked; he turned for a split second, and that was just enough time for me to slam into him and take him down to the ground in a tangle of limbs. The ravens around him squawked and wheeled, diving at my head as we wrestled, but I ignored them. I reached for my pistol, but before I could grab it, he pulled a knife from somewhere and thrust towards my side; I managed to grab his arm to stop it, but that left his other hand free to claw at my face and I had to duck to keep him from gouging at my eyes.

Elizabeth was doing something behind us, but I couldn't see what it was. There was a sound like a crack of lightning and a flash, and then a whoosh of chilly air hit us both in the side; he shifted, and then rolled us over so that he was on top, but I used one foot on the ground to keep the momentum going and then kicked him in the stomach, grunting in satisfaction when he rolled away. There was a surprised exclamation, and then suddenly he was gone, and so was the ground under me.

An arm snaked around my torso and yanked me backwards with a gasp of effort, and the ground appeared under my ass again. In front of me, a hole had appeared in the wall and the floor, leading into open air, as if the whole building had just... disappeared in one small area. Gusts of chilly air hit me from the opening, raising goose pimples on my arms. The edges of the hole in the stone flickered in a way that I'd never seen before; it looked unnatural and something about it, not just the air, gave me the shivers up and down my spine.

Elizabeth heaved me backwards another couple of feet with my help, until my legs were no longer dangling from the opening, and then stepped in front of me and made a familiar motion, as if she were slamming an imaginary set of curtains shut. The sides of the opening raced together, clashed in a crack of thunder, and then the hole was gone as if it had never existed, taking the Crowman with it.

"...what the _hell_," I gasped brokenly, "was _that?_"

She took a few deeps gulps of air, her shoulders shaking with the effort, before she answered.

"It's a... a tear." she gasped. "...it's like an opening into another dimension, kind of."

"Another dimension." I repeated in disbelief, staring at her. She ignored my words and offered me a hand up, which I ignored, climbing to my feet by myself.

"I've been able to make them since I was little. They're like windows into other worlds. Most of the time, they're dull as dishwater, just a different coloured towel, or a tea instead of coffee, but sometimes they're useful."

I wasn't sure that I believed this. Maybe this girl had been locked up because she was crazy.

Then my mind jumped back to Monument Island, when I'd been watching her through the observation hatches. She'd done something then too, something that I couldn't explain. A whole street had just appeared in the middle of the room, and it hadn't been a projection or a trick. This time, she'd made a hole through the side of a building and down through the entire rest of the floating island. I knew it was real, because the Crowman had fallen through it; I'd felt the air on my skin, gusting through the opening.

Maybe... maybe she was telling the truth.

"So, these tears... can you make them anywhere?" I asked. She shrugged.

"I used to be able to do a lot more with them when I was little. Now I can't do much, except sometimes pull things through, if they're worth it."

I turned towards the square that led to the gondola platform and she followed me without question. "Got any airships in there?" I asked, mostly as a joke. She cracked a smile and shook her head.

"No, but sometimes I can find other things. Weapons, ammo, things like that. I'll help you, if I can."

This time, as we walked through the bloodshed, she didn't hesitate as much, though she still insisted on sprucing up the stiffs before we left. I scrounged in their pockets, pulling out wallets, change, ammo, anything we could use. From one, I took another pistol, loaded it, and handed it to Elizabeth, hand grip first. She looked at it with furrowed eyebrows and shook her head, so I grabbed her hand and forced her to take it before she could protest.

"You almost got killed back there. I'm not saying you have to attack anyone, just keep it for protection. That probably won't be the last time someone tries to come after you." she pursed her lips, but shoved it into her skirt at the hip and didn't argue further. I took that as consent, and together we headed for the gondola.

–

We had to use the skyhooks to get to the Hall of Heroes. The gondola was stuck on the line, sandwiched by cargo, so I gritted my teeth and bore it, but that didn't mean I liked it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, whooped and laughed the entire way, not noticing my discomfort. Since I never knew what we'd find at the end of the line, I didn't want her in front of me either, so my entire view on the ride was open sky around and below me. It was a relief to set my feet back on solid ground, even if it was still ground floating in midair.

The Hall of Heroes was, as promised, completely deserted on the outside. The first room held another mechanized statue of George Washington that spewed terrible poetry; we moved on, looking for signs of where the Shock Jockey could be. The next room held a more familiar face, preserved in stone. He had a balding head and a large, formidable mustache, one eye covered by a patch. His clothes were simple army wear, but even carved in stone, they looked neat and clean; a trait of the man that wore them, always. One foot thrust forward, saber held outstretched, he looked as if he had been depicted directing men into battle, a stance that fit him so well that even no matter how much he'd changed, I recognized him down to the boots.

The placard under the statue read, 'Cornelius Slate, Soldier of the Orient'.

"He's quite the looker." Elizabeth said as she examined the statue, finger on her lips as if she were thinking.

"I know him." I replied shortly. She turned to look at me in surprise.

"Know him? How?"

I didn't get a chance to answer; somewhere, a loudspeaker kicked on, and then the question was being answered for me.

"Corporal DeWitt." I grimaced at the title. "It seems you haven't lost your bearing, soldier. I'm sorry that it had to come down to this."

"What are you doing here, Slate?" I yelled back, not sure if he could hear me. There was silence for a moment.

"I was invited here by our Father Comstock and the Lady Comstock. They wanted to celebrate the victories of the American soldier here in Columbia, and to preserve the heroic deeds and the lives that were given for the American public. They built this place in our honour, yours and mine. Is it not grand?"

I didn't look around.

"Look, we're just here for the Shock Jockey vigor. If you can tell us where it is, we'll leave you alone." I tried.

"I know that's what you're here for, DeWitt. We knew you would come here. Unfortunately, I can't let you continue. Not as a threat to our Prophet. Hopefully, once you know more you'll see reason. You were a good Corporal, DeWitt, a real warrior, and once you know everything you can stand beside me to teach Columbia about the honour of the soldier."

There was a shift in the air and a scuff of feet on stone. Around us, doors opened, and soldiers poured in, each loaded with a firearm. I pulled my carbine and swung up to aim, but there were already too many, and more were flooding in. There were dozens of them, every single one armed, every single one with the hard face of a soldier. These weren't cops. And with only the statue in the room for cover, there was nowhere to hide. We were surrounded.

"Put it down, Corporal."someone commanded. The sea of soldiers parted down the middle, and in walked Cornelius Slate in the flesh. He looked older, much older than when I'd know him; time had not been good to him and, just like in the statue, had apparently taken one of his eyes. He had a pistol in a holster on his belt, but he didn't pull it.

"Just give us the Shock Jockey, Slate." I snarled, raising the gun.

He held out a hand, and something arced from his palm to Elizabeth and me. The moment it touched my skin, I screamed, and my body convulsed. Waves of pain contorted my limbs, even as I fell to the ground. Behind me, Elizabeth was screaming too, and then with a pained gasp, she collapsed and fell silent. The arc of electricity from Slate's hand cut off, but still I groaned, unable to move, unable to even look up. It was as if my limbs were paralyzed. I tried to say something, anything, as he raised his hand again, but all that came out was a gurgle, and then there was more pain, and then darkness.

–

_**A/N: **_So. You've probably noticed we've taken a turn in the story. A big one. Where will it all lead? (Muhahah.)

Thanks to freelancer93, Mr. CJ of Blackwater, and Zephr-of-Shadows for the fantastic reviews. To answer your questions, **CJ**: The story will remain a secret. It's more fun that way! **Free Lancer**: I hope this chapter is a little better on that! I'm working hard to keep Elizabeth as awesome as she was in the game. And **Zephyr**, I think maybe we both took the pendant thing the wrong way, but come on?! Lock the girl up in a cage with a bird-jailor, and then give her bird/cage jewelry? Seriously?

As always, thanks for reading and drop a review for me if you can. See you next time!


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